Pandora's Box: Book 3 of the Crystal Raven Series

The Cimmerian region of Turkey had at one time been the site of a brutal, drawn-out conflict during one of the World Wars, and the stench of death still clung to its beaches. The ageing fortress resting in the cliffs above these beaches bore the scars from some past naval bombardment, a crippled survivor that had long ago fallen into disuse. The forty or fifty shadows creeping along its night enshrouded battlements were not ghosts, although many had been alive when the first blocks of the fortress were hauled up to the mountain. One, a man-at-arms of their hosts, had been here to see that day. These mortals wasted lives and blood in a thousand ruins like this, in centuries of wars that were quickly fought and quickly forgotten – always had, and always would.

With red eyes, they studied the dark countryside, searching for threats – mortal or otherwise. They and the ones they guarded had settled into the fortress the evening before, arriving from destinations that circled the globe. The council of Vampyre Nations was set to meet, calling a rare Grand Council to elect a new High Councillor and meet the rumoured threat to their whole race.

As a people, the Vampyres were as divided as ever. Now that Vlad and the North American conclave was broken, the Western nations were severely weakened. Everyone anticipated a power struggle between this nation and the Middle Eastern and the African bloc. Control of the council was to pass onto the Egyptian, but not for another eight hundred years. Nothing like this had happened in the four thousand years since the council had come into existence, and the Elder Nations were not ready to follow the Younglings when so much was at stake. It could lead to open warfare amongst the Nations, and those guarding the fortress were hyperaware that the bloodshed would begin here.

And then he showed up, the half-breed whelp of High Lord Vlad, trailing a menagerie of lower caste vampyres. At least one or two were possessed by demons, and another might even be a demon. It was like bringing a leper to a Cotillion dance or crashing a wedding with a busload of homeless drunks – a slap in the face of their host that could not be ignored. If perfumed handkerchiefs were still in vogue, the councillors and the retinues would be holding them to their noses even weeks after Lord Delph and his rabble had left. And strangely, no one made a move to say anything to the young lord, or even suggest that he had no place here. There was that about him a hard look of a soldier who had seen too much bloodshed and was more than willing to spill more without a thought.

The night was quiet, and the guards stood their posts as still as statues. Nothing stirred in the shadows at the skirts of the fortress, or in the landscape that stretched out to the sea. Below, in the remains of the fortress’ common room, things were far from quiet. The other nine High Lords were objecting to the presence of Lord Delph – high lord heir or no – and the Western leaders were remaining mute. If he was to lead them, he would have to prove himself – and if he could not deal with his own troubles on the council, he was not ready to represent them here.

Delph’s nameless advisor cut through the angry babble with a voice that was ice. “My Lord Delph’s heritage is unassailable! He is the rightful heir to the Romanov clans and still the leader of the largest Vampyre Nation. As such, you will recognize him as High Lord.”

Through everything, Delph remained aloof, as if their babble was beneath him. He had other matters on his mind at the moment.

“And who are you to dictate to us,” the Caribbean vampyre hissed.

“I am the Keeper of the Histories for the Romanov clans,” the older vampyre retorted. “And I will remind you of the articles of the Concord of Nations.”

“A Chronicler has no say here,” Kagawa interjected. “This is the Council of Elders.”

“This is a house of fools who are leading our peoples to extinction,” Delph spat.

“What would you know, gaijin child?”

“I know that your failure to kill the girl has left the succubus only months away from completing the Spiritus Raptor. With it, she will kill us all,” Delph replied and turning on a heel, he stormed out of the chamber. He had no time for these egotistical fools. He was a soldier with a soldier’s duty to do.

Later, on the battlements overlooking the sere landscape, his advisor found Delph staring up at the stars. Was it only a year ago when he had been sneaking into mortal hospitals and dragging the odd victim down into Upyr? It seemed like a lifetime ago. Overhead, Mars was barely visible – a small, red star lost amidst a field of distant suns. He wondered if at one time the vampyres on the Blood planet had not ruled over a populace of willing sheep? Was it ever like in those childhood stories his nanny would read to him? If such a place existed, it would be his father’s vision of paradise. His, Delph thought, would be something wilder – a place where vampyres could hunt their prey without fear of extinction. Somewhere his people could grow strong and not weak as they had been for generations.

It was a numbers game. Humans bred like a plague while his own people’s population was limited by the lack of a safe food supply, biology and cultural restrictions. Every vampyre nation had toyed with synthetic blood supplies, but nothing could be produced that contained a scintilla of pranic energy. Humans, and other living creatures, remained the sole source of nutrition for his kind.

“That was unwise,” his mentor advised.

“They will call us back in,” Delph waved away his criticism. “Once they ask their people to tell them about the Spiritus Raptor, they will not be able to ignore the threat she represents.”

But not that night. They stood in silence, watching the surrounding countryside through the night…

Below, in the council chamber, the meeting was not going well. The young lord’s brief appearance and even hastier departure had left the council more divided than before he had arrived. Replacing a sitting High Lord, even after death, required a unanimous vote and the two sitting Western Lords refused to accept any candidate from any of the other clans. For far too long, the ancient clans had dictate their fate, keeping their people weak. Now, even with the setback in North America, they still had the numbers. If they could keep control of this council, they could not only recoup those losses but strengthen their position over the next five hundred years. There was no way they were going to surrender that power without a fight.

From time to time, one of the councillors could not help mentioning the succubus and this unknown threat, even if only in passing. What did the young whelp mean? What kind of weapon could threaten them all? It was ludicrous. How could any super relic exist that could mow them down, especially as scattered and hidden as they all were? Disease? So little affected their people that even the common cold was unheard of amongst them, and again they lived in communities that were too scattered and isolated for any epidemic to take hold. And still, amongst a people who spent centuries avoiding it, nothing could weigh heavier on their minds than the threat of death.

Their fear made the councillors more hostile than normal. A brawl between the Caribbean Voodoo Princess and the Roman Ice Queen broke up the session hours before dawn. Nothing had been resolved.

Salving her injured pride with a bottle of two-hundred-year-old blood, Angelique de Vallo sat curled up on a loveseat. Her thoughts were interrupted by a soft knock on the door. A dark, small man with a large head and a child’s body stepped into the room. Clad in dark, nondescript clothes that hung on his frame like sacks, he was someone you would look at twice and immediately try to forget. It was what made him such a good spy, and why Angelique had kept him with her for centuries despite his ugliness.

“Carlos,” she greeted, swirling the blood lazily in her crystal goblet.

“My Lady,” the small man replied, bowing his head slightly.

“How did you find me here? Our secret meeting is not as secret as I had hoped,” she sighed, sitting up. “Never mind, you have found me. What news from home?”

“Something has happened in the Vatican,” Carlos began carefully. “Rumours say the Pope was turned and the Brotherhood has taken his head. The Pope is certainly dead, and the Brotherhood has been excommunicated.”

“Who would have done such a thing?” She replied, shocked.

“Our agents have heard it was the whelp of Lord Vlad Romanov,” Carlos offered carefully. It would not do to anger his employer, and the Romanovs were a touchy subject with her.

Angelique waved him into the shadows, calling, “Don Sao!”

A tall, dark man, clad head to foot in chain mail and carrying a very serious automatic weapon, stepped through the door. “My Lady?”

“Send someone to ask if Lord Delph Romanov will attend me,” She instructed. “And Don Sao, ask, mind you.”

Delph and his mysterious advisor were still on the battlements when Lady Angelique’s messenger found them. Word of his success in the Vatican had reached him. Earlier that summer, he had managed to revenge his people on one of the two demons responsible for the destruction of Upyr – only the bitch Crystal Raven remained. War was a bloody business, and although he had lost assets in both operations, he had managed to weaken his enemies. It was not until those first losses did he understand that his father had always meant Upyr as a sacrifice, a distraction that kept his enemies’ focus away from his real operations. Always too timid, his father had waited too long to put many of these operations into play. Fortune favoured risk-takers.

“We will attend her,” Delph responded to the invitation despite his advisor’s misgivings. There was no place left in this world for the timid.

The Vatican operation was one of his father’s projects that had never been given the green light. Why his father had developed the plan in the first place, they may never know. Delph saw it as a way to sow confusion amongst his enemy and buy himself time to organize his own people. And time was the one thing he needed more than anything else. If what his advisor was telling him about the Spiritus Raptor was true, he would need the resources of every Vampyre nation to stop Crystal Raven and her allies from building this weapon.

Turning, Delph did not wait for either the messenger to lead the way or for his advisor to fall into step. Even his councillor did not know the full extent of his triumph in the Vatican. Few, beyond the Council in Upyr, knew of his father’s plans, and most thought he had been breeding super-soldiers. After reviewing all his plans, Delph began to suspect his father was more devious than anyone knew. His father’s plans were much more subtle than that. Sleeper agents, not soldiers. Vampyres who could move amongst the humans, indistinguishable from the mortals, unaffected by the sun, and with all the charisma and strength of their kind. And taking control of the Pope? It could only be a final step in his eventual takeover.

Like Frederick-Wilhelm, the father of Frederick the Great, who had built the Prussian state and army his son had used to smash Europe, Delph’s father had left him a network of agents seeded in governments across the world. And like Frederick the Great, Delph was not afraid to put these assets to the test. At the moment, one of his New Breed was on the shortlist to be elected Pope. If that particular seed bore fruit, he would be able to widen the rift between the Church and the Brotherhood - perhaps to the point of open warfare. And maybe, with one point two billion Catholics in the world, the Church still had enough political clout to matter in the events to come….

The assassination of Pope Pius had been a true stroke of genius. Most would see it as a clumsy attempt to drive a wedge between the Church and Brotherhood – one that had succeeded. No-one would look closer at the more serious threat it hid, hopefully not until it was too late.

A serious set of guards waited outside Lady Angelique’s doors. Depth now felt he was a front line soldier and beyond such trappings of office. He stopped, inspecting their weapons. If a leader could not defend himself, he was no good to his people, not during a war. Guards like this took some of a people’s best fighters from the front lines, where their skills were most needed.

“We are vulnerable here during the day,” he said to the Captain of the Guard. “The Brotherhood is employing a new weapon – explosives. While not always deadly, they do incapacitate. In daylight, they can seed the compound with these and detonate them at distances.”

“I will keep that in mind,” the Captain replied, hesitating, “My Lord.”

Delph winked. “We soldiers have no need for labels.”

Inside, Lady Angelique sat at an elegant table set out with a decanter of blood and two glasses. Delph found his own chair, leaving his councillor to make the greetings. He was a soldier and above these social niceties – or maybe beneath them.

“I’ve had interesting news from Rome this evening,” Lady Angelique commented, dispensing with the formalities.

“A little project of mine,” Delph admitted, nodding over the rim of his glass of blood. “I must confess, it is coming along nicely.”

“And killing the Pope after turning him was not a setback?” She demanded.

Delph laughed lightly. “Having the Brotherhood discover his dirty little secret was always part of the plan. That they moved so openly against him surprised even me, but who could complain when your enemy slits their own throat?”

“And so,” Lady Angelique summed up, “driving a rift between them was the heart of this scheme?

“Oh no, my dear lady,” Delph chuckled. “Only an unexpected surprise. I have more surprises in store for the Brotherhood. One of our New Breed is on the shortlist to become Pope. Delicious, isn’t it?”

Lady Angelique nearly choked on her blood. “One of your Daylight Soldiers?”

“Daylight Soldiers. I am surprised my father’s ruse has worked so well. After what happened at Mount Vesuvius, I thought at least the High Lords would have realized that Upyr was a front to hide our real operations,” and Delph did laugh. “Oh, they can move in daylight – but their true purpose is to replace the leaders of the Human nations.”

Lady Angelique set down her goblet and stared at him for a long moment. “How?”

“The Civatateo genome was the easiest to manipulate,” Delph confessed. “One wouldn’t want to lose control of one’s tools, I should think, so it is fortunate. There were, unfortunately, throwbacks – and these were the ones we displayed to the world. We had some amazing success with our breeding program.”

“How many?” She asked, not sure if she really wanted to hear the answer.

“Some two thousand,” Delph concluded. “Faster, stronger and smarter. Four hundred are in place as sleeper agents throughout the world.”

“So many?” Lady Angelique breathed, sitting on the edge of her chair.

“So few,” Delph replied bitterly.

His father’s plan had been brilliant in its conception and flawed in its execution. His need to control, to centralize their resources, and that concentration had attracted the wrong kind of attention. Yes, it had kept the Brotherhood’s attention focused away from his secret bases, but it had also wasted a lot of resources his people desperately needed now. Delph was scattering his people and resources, keeping the best in Canada around their secret facilities beneath the Canadian Shield. Advertised to the world as a scientific research centre studying particle acceleration and photon behaviour, it had been built deep in an abandoned mine. It housed some four thousand vampyres and their support network – blood farms, manufacturing plants and security. When the Human government had licensed the facility and sold the rights to the mine, the council in Upyr had bought it and transferred their breeding program there.

Now he was forced to gather his forces again. It was time for open warfare, and he was more than willing to use Human weapons against the mortals. Already he had purchased two freighters and laden them with black market weapons. The purchase of another twenty freighters would be complete by the end of the week, the transfer of ownership papers and payments all handled by anonymous agents. Into these, he would cram his forces, not shy about dragooning demons and other lesser beings – although the bulk of his shock troops needed no ships to cross the oceans. Fortunately so. Numbers would count more in the days to come than the purity of blood.

“The final battle will be fought somewhere in Eastern Europe or Asia,” he commented. “If we cannot convince the High Council to commit all our resources, any other skirmish will not matter. The war will already have been lost.”

“You think this weapon really exists?” Lady Angelique questioned sharply.

“I know she has two, maybe three components already. I cannot say how she means to use it. My agents could find out little more than her success means genocide for our people.”

“Surely, this is no more than a fairy tale?” The Italian scoffed.

“There is much the Elder Nations have not told us.”

When he had left, Lady Angelique called for Don Sao to attend her. The soldier was prompt in his response.

“My Lady?” Don Sao announced.

“What do you think of the young lordling?” She asked, pouring herself another cup of blood. Her energy was flagging before the constant stress, and she would need a full feeding soon. “And speak openly.”

“My Lady,” Don Sao chose his words carefully. “Those he brought with him are not the rabble others want us to think, but disciplined soldiers. Two dozen of them guard the walls during daylight, and their squad leaders are Shadow Slayers.”

“Demons? How many?” Angelique hissed.

“Besides the two Shadow Slayers,” Don Sao shrugged. “Perhaps as many as a dozen. They fear him, or maybe his councillor. His personal guards are Civatateo, but I would not want to go up against them. And the men like him.”

“My men?”

“All the men,” Don Sao replied.