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

The British patrol, those who had survived the brief, bloody fight, escorted or were escorted by the ninety-five surviving Brotherhood soldiers to Victory Base Complex, the American Headquarters in Iraq. They brought with them the combat footage from their surviving APV because no-one was going to believe what had happened without it. They had lived through it, and they did not believe it. Someone in HQ was going to have kittens over this one, and the British lieutenant did not want to be the one who wrote up the report. They would drum him out of the corps so fast his head would be spinning for a year, and then someone would bury the report and him in some dark corner of the Common Wealth.

It was well after nightfall when this strange column reached the camp. No-one in Iraq was fond of night patrols, even with night vision technology, and even after nine years in-country. There were too many dangers that hid in the night – freshly planted IEDs, snipers and ambushes. Not as often as in those early days in-country, they were making progress stabilizing Iraq, yet these things still happened often enough to make night patrols a thing to avoid.

The Brotherhood soldiers strolled through the night as if they feared nothing human, and with what they routinely fought, the LT didn’t doubt it. What was a mere human compared to something that could throw a tank at you? Immediately inside the gates, the British patrol and its prisoners were surrounded by nervous and heavily armed guards, and within minutes the LT and the one they referred to as the Grand Master was being escorted directly to General Petreaus’ office. It was the first time the British officer had been anywhere near the man who commanded MNF-I forces in Iraq, and he was not sure he liked the rarefied company he was now keeping. Especially with the report he still had to make.

The moment the two men came face to face, military protocol went out the window.

“Gabriel,” the general grunted. “Somehow, I should have known. I get a report of demons and things that go bump in the night….”

“It’s been a while, David,” Gabriel replied, ignoring the others in the room.

“Since the jungles of Vietnam,” General Petreaus replied, sighing as he remembered what he would rather have forgotten.

“Decades, I think,” Gabriel replied, “maybe even centuries.”

“And what brings you to my neck of the woods?” General Petreaus asked, knowing he would not like the answer.

“I think you better watch the video feed from this lad’s vehicle before we talk,” Gabriel replied wearily, fishing out a cigar. “Without it, I don’t think you will believe a word I say.”

Officially, the footage belonged to the Brits, but neither the young British officer or the British liaison officer made a fuss as technicians downloaded it from the camera on his APV and queued it up on a computer and projector in the general’s office. The technicians set up a screen, and soon, they were watching grainy footage of the battle fought at Hatra. The general did not know why the footage shot at night was always green, but he suspected it had to do with the filters used with the night vision technology. It lent an unreal quality to everything they saw. A figure slightly larger than the average man swam into focus. They watched a fifty calibre machinegun stitch a dozen bullets into his chest, and the general waited for him to fall over.

He did not. Instead, the figure stumbled forward against the vicious fire and then flipped over the APV with his bare hands. The men watching drew back in horror.

“Rewind that bit,” the general ordered.

A tech shook the cobwebs out of his head and moved to the computer. A minute later, the same sequence replayed.

“Could a man hopped up on some kind of synthetic steroids do something like that?” One of the security officers asked speculatively.

“That’s not possible,” a marine colonel barked. “An APV weighs close to fifteen tons. Where did this dribble come from?”

“I assure you, sir,” the Lieutenant replied, taking an at-ease stance, “no-one has altered that footage. It is an exact representation of what my men and I encountered.”

“And exactly how did you stop this?” the colonel demanded.

“Let the footage run,” Gabriel suggested, “and see for yourself.”

Five men leapt out of the clouds of smoke and dust to surround the creature as three Brits ran in to help their companions trapped in the upended armoured vehicle. Three of the men were bare-chested, and none seemed to be carrying any modern weapon. They leapt on this ‘Super Terrorist,’ stabbing at it with knives. It and two of its attackers never got up.

“I have some footage of my own you should watch before we talk,” Gabriel suggested, passing a thumb drive to the technician. “Gentlemen, what you are about to watch was shot on the morning Turkey went black. I’m sure your security people can verify this data if they had eyes over the country that morning.”

The footage was shaky, but at least it was in colour, even though most of that colour was black and white. It showed a stretch of the Turkish coastline shortly after midnight. It looked like a scene out of some Fifties horror film. Hundreds of shambling creatures filled the screen, arising out of the surf like a plague, threatening even whoever was filming this. The footage obviously came from a cell phone, one with a high-end camera installed. Shot at night, most was black on black, with only the moon providing light.

“Those, gentlemen, are known as Eaters of the Dead,” Gabriel began narrating. “This is what happens to a human who is bitten by a vampyre from one of the lesser castes – providing they survive the encounter.”

“General!” One of the officers demanded. “You’re not buying this shit?”

“I’ve seen something like this myself,” General Petreaus replied, “back in Nam. Took out three tanks before a group of Buddhist monks killed it.”

“Check with your intelligence agencies,” Gabriel suggested. “I’m sure by now they’ve had satellites over the area more than once.”

“And what do you want, Gabriel?” The general asked pointedly.

“I have the assets to contain this,” Gabriel replied. “I need your help moving them into position.”

“With what?”

“Helicopters, just like in Nam,” Gabriel explained. “And gunships to light up the LZ. I suspect we will be going in hot.”

“How many?” General Petreaus asked.

“Enough to move ten thousand men and their equipment,” Gabriel replied evenly.

“That’s more helicopters than we currently have in theatre,” the Marine Colonel spat.

“If we don’t contain this now, we will lose Europe in a month,” Gabriel replied. “And after that happens, I doubt anyone will be able to stop them, so I suggest you find me those helicopters and a shit load of air support.”

Gabriel was led to a mess tent, where he was given a coffee and a meal. Calls were being made to superiors, to allies and to dozens of intelligence agencies. Within an hour, copies of both videos were being emailed to hundreds of locations. Gabriel figured he had four, maybe five hours to catch some shuteye before he had to start answering some serious questions from a dozen intelligence agencies. Admitting the existence of vampyres was a difficult journey, and by now, a dozen countries had their own satellite footage from Turkey – Russia, China, the US, France and Britain, maybe even India and Pakistan. What they saw there he could only guess? Gabriel, however, was sure he would not have to wait long before they came to him looking for answers and someone to blame.

The day had been hot and dry, and the poisoned water had been greatly missed by those labouring on the fortress’ defences. As evening approached parched and exhausted, they lined up for a meal and their last drink of water for the day. Something had to give soon. The number of Eaters of Dead in the hills surrounding the fortress had grown into the tens of thousands, and there would be no controlling them soon. Hunger would drive them towards fresh meat, an irresistible urge that would stop for nothing. And when they came, the most the Brotherhood could hope to do was delay the inevitable. There would be no stopping that tide of death.

April wandered out onto the front porch, where she found Alvaro and Angel lounging in the shade. She took advantage of his presence to lean wearily against Angel’s chest. Who said the young girls were the only ones who could treat an angel like furniture?

“Maybe we should move the wounded into the labyrinth?” Angel suggested.

“I’ve set some of my people to see to it,” April breathed, “should have the last patient transferred immediately after supper. How much of the water and supplies have you managed to move?”

“About half,” Alvaro replied. “I didn’t think we should move any more. Tramping back and forth for water and food would give its location away.”

“Any idea what’s for dinner?” April asked, hopefully.

“Neither of us eats,” Angel chuckled, and then shrugged.

“Crap,” April complained. “Now, I have to walk all that way just to find out if I want any.”

“Eat woman,” Alvaro teased, “you’re going to need your strength.”

April turned her gaze towards the mountains and her thoughts towards her missing girls. She was ambivalent about their absence – glad they were far away from the storm that was coming, and missing and worried about them. Cantara and Aiko would look out for them, but who would look out for those two? The mountains could be dangerous, especially that mountain. And it was more than nature they had to contend with – others were looking to stop them before they finished their mission. These April could only hope they had stopped from reaching the mountain before the girls and would continue to hold them at bay until they returned.

April wandered over towards the mess tent, which had been moved outside because of the heat, frowning back at the two men who refused to carry her. Damn, she was tired. When was the last time she had gotten a good night’s sleep? Probably not since Jean-Claude had died. She paused to look out over the walls, barely able to see the hilltops where the vampyres were hiding and a field of stars that blinked like a thousand campfires. Sieges sucked, to borrow a term from her girls. They wore on your nerves, stealing sleep until you wandered around in a daze like a zombie. Eventually, even when starvation began to set in, the stress robbed you of your appetite and left a heavy lassitude in its wake. She wanted to get it over and done.

Dinner was some bean and corn concoction, the entire batch flavoured with half an onion. It was so bland she wanted to dump it back into the pot. She had to do something about the food, and soon, before morale disappeared altogether. It was another in a long list of responsibilities she found herself shouldering since Jean-Claude’s death. Everything in her life seemed to come back to this one pivotal event that night beneath the streets of New York City. Why did he have to leave her when she needed him the most?

She was staring out at the night for a long moment before she realized what she was seeing. April dropped her plate of beans, yelling, “sound the alarm! To the walls! To the walls!”

An explosion rocked the night as the shambling horde reached the first of the minefields….

Gabriel was on a plane to Germany, flying through the night to a special NATO meeting that included military leaders from fourteen non-NATO nations. It had started, the Brotherhood’s greatest nightmare. Now that governments were recognizing the threat of vampyres, at least to the extent to send a representative to this meeting, it was one step closer to becoming general knowledge. How long before papers and news programs screamed their sensational headlines and the witch hunts began all over again? As the plane began its descent, Gabriel realized he had had no choice. The vampyres had caught them with their pants down. If only Jean-Claude was still alive, none of this would have happened. No-one had understood the motivations and psychology of the vampyres better than that man.

A car was waiting for him and his escort at the airport. The meeting was being held in an isolated location in the Bavarian mountains, the ancestral home of a Junker Lord that had been converted into a government retreat. The attempt to keep the meeting a secret reassured Gabriel a little. Events in Turkey were hard to ignore, but that did not make it any easier to believe. Already the silence from that country had whetted the curiosity of half the journalists in Europe, and the official line of a coup and a civil war was wearing thin in the face of the disappearance of nearly two dozen reports. At this point, Gabriel doubted their employers would want them back – those few who were still alive.

The car pulled up into a driveway already crowded by limousines with diplomatic plates. Between the national flags and the size and flash of the cars, Gabriel was surprised not to see a couple of hundred reporters at the gates. Sometimes governments could keep secrets if their miscommunications campaigns were strong enough. These days most governments leaked worse than a sieve, especially the Western democracies – a by-product of a free press and the proliferation of Freedom of Information laws. Still, even these had their moments, and today he was glad to see this was one of them.

Inside, nearly two score worried and angry men and women waited. Most turned a jaundiced eye towards him, their skepticism evident in their body language. These men were used to responding to threats with missiles, tanks and bombing runs. A man who wore armour and carried a sword was a lunatic in their world. Gabriel was glad he could expect some support from the Americans, who had sent five drones in to support the surviving Turkish resistance. They planned to show the footage from those bombing runs against a massive Eater of the Dead. Gabriel felt the results would be instructive.

“Let’s get down to brass tacks, gentlemen, and ladies,” the American general began as soon as they found their seats. “We’ve all reviewed the reports from our various intelligence agencies, and I’m sure came to a couple of dozen conclusions.

“This is impossible!” General Bouchard, the French general spat. “How could any sane man take this mysticism seriously?”

“And even if it were true,” the Russian general countered, “we send in our armour columns and planes and mop it up in a week. How do you Americans say? Shock and awe.”

“I thought so too until I saw the footage from our drones,” the American general sighed wearily. The past forty-eight hours had been hell. “Maybe we should run the footage from our two encounters with these creatures. Major, if you would?”

Major Bradley was from one of the military intelligence agencies. At his nod, a pert German woman turned out the lights. On a screen that had been lowered with a remote, a familiar grainy image appeared. Gabriel had seen similar footage before, clips from the Gulf War that had been released to the media and run on the nightly news.

“This is a run from one of our drones on the Eastern Border of Turkey near Russia. At the moment, we are hitting an eighty-seven percent accuracy rate with this model of drone. This was a direct hit.”

“That tank it threw like a toddler having a tantrum was one of our early model M1 Abrams. It weighs approximately 60 tons.”

The drone released its payload, and the camera followed the missile to its target, the screen turning bright white as the ordinance exploded. The men cheered, a lonely sound that died as the second drone began its run. The same target was clearly visible in the centre of the screen, the missile with a payload big enough to level a city block hadn’t even slowed it down.

“Three of our five runs scored direct hits,” the Major went on to explain, “the other two were near misses. As far as we can determine, the target suffered only minor damage, losing one of its limbs.”

“If we cannot fight these with tanks and planes,” the one-eyed Israeli demanded, “how are we supposed to stop them?”

“Fortunately, we have a man here who I am told is an expert on such matters. This is Grandmaster Gabriel of the Vatican Brotherhood.”

“A vampyre,” Gabriel explained, “is a form of demi-demon. It can be killed, but not by modern methods.”

“What?” the French general snapped. “Do we kill it with garlic cloves and crosses?”

“Hollywood bullshit,” Gabriel scoffed. “A vampyre can be killed by either cutting its head off or a stake through its heart if the stake is made from the True Cross. A few other holy artifacts will work too. I have the resources to contain this situation, ten thousand trained demon slayers, but I need your help to get them here.” Gabriel pointed to a section of the Turkish countryside where the fortress lay.

“And what would you want?” The Israeli general asked.

“Helicopters,” Gabriel replied. “As many as you can get your hands on. If we can’t go through them, we need to get over them.”

“And why should we help you?” The Chinese delegate countered. “You are the terrorists who assassinated your pope.”

“We are the only force with the training, the non-human allies, and the weapons,” Gabriel replied. “If we don’t take care of this situation in Turkey, we won’t be able to help you when the true demons sniffing around your borders, turn their eyes towards Beijing.”

The Chinese intelligence agencies had heard the stories coming out of Cambodia and Viet Nam, and after the images coming out of Turkey became available, the Beijing government was lending these stories credence. Their representative here was authorized to lend military assistance in exchange for help with their own problem.

“We would need to fly through Russian airspace,” he countered.

“It can be arranged if you pilots accept Russian escorts,” the Russian general countered. Moscow had ordered him to co-operate as fully as possible, worried that more of these creatures would cross into their own country. They and the Georgians had lost nearly a thousand men fighting twenty of these things.

“We would need assurances from the Jordanians and the Iraqis,” the Israeli representative countered.

“We are all military men here,” the American general offered. “Let’s put our plan together and let the diplomats and politicians arrange the details.”

Explosions rocked the night as Brotherhood soldiers raced to the walls. The medical staff was divided between preparing pre-op for the impending wounded and transferring their existing patients down into the labyrinth. Standing on the wall flanked by Angel and Alvaro on one side, and Wandjina on the other, April kept one eye on her medical staff and a second on the advancing vampyres. So far, the thousands of mines they had buried were slowing down the tide rolling towards the fortress, but that horde numbered in the tens of thousands. She wondered when and if she should order her troops to fall back. Either way, it looked like Gabriel, and his relief would come too late.

On the right flank, one of their tanks opened up with its main guns, targeting some of the larger Eaters of the Dead. Their armour-piercing shells did little to slow these behemoths down, but the smoke and the noise did drive them into the minefields. Two trebuchets set up by the engineers tossed barrels of napalm and hickory stakes that exploded like hand grenades on impact. For the moment the line was holding, but with each passing minute, the carpet of vampyres rolled closer, their supply of fresh bodies to throw into the meat grinder seeming endless.

It was the left flank where they were in trouble. The sea of misshapen bodies rolled across the minefields there, sacrificing hundreds to open a path. With no tanks or catapults to support them, they could not hold. Seeing the trouble developing there, Alvaro suggested April order a withdrawal.

“Wandjina?” April asked. “Could you do something to slow them down and cover our retreat.”

For the first time, she saw the grinning godlet frown. He turned and seemed to converse with some unseen spirit. He nodded. April passed on the order to prepare to withdraw, using the start of Wandjina’s delaying action as a signal to begin the retreat. The small aboriginal closed his eyes and raised his arms. He stood there for a long moment. April waited anxious and impatient. The breeze freshened, blowing back her hair – blessed relief from the heat of the last few days. It continued to gather strength, dark clouds gathering in the skies above. When the first bolt of lightning plummeted to earth, exploding in the ranks of the encroaching vampyres, no-one mistook the signal to retreat. A mass exodus from the left wall began as a stream of lightning detonated in the hills beyond the fortress.

It was the largest helicopter transport in history. Led by gunships from dozens of countries, from the Apaches of the Americans to the Russian Kamov Ka-50’s, the giant fleet of helicopters gathered in the skies over Turkey. American A-10 Tank Busters, Russian MIGs and Israeli F16s flew ahead on a bombing run. Egyptian, Saudi Arabian and Chinese planes followed, while British, French and German planes flew high altitude cover. When this giant air flotilla came together for the final approach, over eight hundred helicopters darkened the skies.

Inside the troop transports, Brotherhood Choirs and their equipment waited for the signal to disembark. None of the helicopters would land. It was too dangerous, the risk of a grounded helicopter being overrun by the hordes of Eaters of the Dead too great. Instead, these men and women would repel from lines, throwing themselves into the heart of the fray. Even with fire support from the many gunships, it would be a bloody night. Experts calculated their losses would be greater than fifty percent, but this is what the Brotherhood soldiers lived and trained for – to die protecting Humanity from its darker enemies.

In one of the helicopters in the third wave, Gabriel waited, monitoring the radio chatter from his flotilla. The first flight of bombers were reporting successful runs, fires now lighting the hillside. Nothing could live through that pummelling the pilots reported, but the Brotherhood choirs knew better. All the bombs and missiles would do was shake them up a little, and hopefully, keep them off balance long enough for his own troops to hit the ground.

The first wave of helicopters arrived. Tracer bullets followed the Brotherhood forces down into the fire and smoke, where their movements were hidden from those waiting above. A giant hand grabbed hold of one of the repel lines, pulling the helicopter from the sky before passengers and crew could bailout. The task force had suffered its first casualties….

Gabriel stood up to take his place on the repel lines. Two waves were on the ground and three more ready to drop. A counter-assault from the fortress rushed out in support, led by two tanks, and initial reports told a story of bloody hand-to-hand combat. It was still touch-and-go, and once he hit the ground, Gabriel would lose what little control over the battle he had in the chaotic swirl of combat. Nodding fatalistically to the jumpmaster, he clipped himself to the line and leapt from the helicopter. The die was cast…

As the helicopter lifted off into the night sky, Gabriel turned to face half a dozen smallish Eaters of the Dead. The little buggers were deceptively fast and had deadly sharp teeth and were all claws. Beyond these, the smoke cleared to reveal a massive brute with one arm blown away, four Buddhist monks moving in to take it out. Gabriel directed his squad to move in to support them, and they waded into the fray with swords and crucifixes. Three of the Eaters of the Dead facing them faded away into the smoke to find easier prey, three lay dead in their wake, already drifting away in long trails of dust that added to the curtain of smoke.

There was no doubt by its size and strength that this brute had been one of the crèche guardians. It was Gabriel’s luck that the first real threat he met on the battlefield was something almost impossible to kill. What was he now? Sixty-eight. Too old for this shit. It stood nearly fifty feet tall, a massive mound of flesh, claws and teeth that made him feel his mortality. Most of its vulnerable spots lay far out of reach above their heads. Gabriel flicked on his radio and called for air support.

“Do you flyboys have my position?” He radioed.

“Roger that,” a voice replied in his ear.

“Could you bring a few of those Apaches around to distract this brute while we figure out how to kill it?” Gabriel requested. “And be careful, it’s fifty feet tall give or take an inch.”

“Copy that. Three Indians coming in hot.”

As the Apaches swooped in, spraying the living mountain with Sparrowhawk missiles and bullets, Gabriel and his team worked their way around behind it. One of the Buddhist monks used the hands of a second as a springboard to jump onto its back, sinking his blades deep into its flesh. Gabriel and two others followed. Using his sword and crucifix as climbing spikes, the Texan began to scale the beast. Above him, one of the climbers fell and was crushed beneath the beast’s feet. His death scream was lost amongst the beast’s bellows of pain and frustration as these fleas continued to bedevil it. Its massive shoulders were too bulky to allow it to reach its own back, and it was reduced to swinging back and forth and bellowing, a macabre parody of the twist.

Reaching its shoulders, Gabriel drove his crucifix into its spine, severing its spinal cord. A mistake, he decided as it lost all bodily functions below its neck and began to pitch over backwards. Sacrificing his sword to save his crucifix – those were irreplaceable now that the Brotherhood was severed from the church – he leapt clear. As he fell from a height he did not want to think about, racing towards an unseen ground below, he cursed the brute for its contrariness. Why couldn’t it have fallen forward like any sane creature? No, even in death, it had to strike back. Not that it was dead. Not until they managed to take its head or drive a crucifix into its heart. No, it was merely quiescent, wounded and unable to move until its injuries healed. If he survived his fall, Gabriel still had a hard, gristly chore ahead of him.

Someone or something caught him short of the ground. That collision would have left him in worse shape than the Eater of the Dead. As his rescuer set him on two wobbly legs, Gabriel turned to see Angel.

“Well now,” he croaked. “Can’t say I’m not glad to see you.”

“Glad to be of service,” Angel nodded. “Let’s bag and tag this.”

“More friggin climbing,” Gabriel complained. “Can’t they make these things in the economy size?”

“Just remember,” Angel teased, “the bigger they are, the harder you fall….”

“You’re a funny man,” Gabriel snapped. “After this is over, you should pursue a career as a stand-up comedian. You’d be a hit.”

Two of the Buddhist monks were already climbing on the fallen behemoth to finish it off before it recovered. The older the vampyre, the quicker its healing abilities and no-one knew how old any of the crèche guardians were – perhaps even older than the oldest vampyre. The ancient ones could recover from catastrophic injuries with one feeding, and there certainly was enough fresh meat on this battlefield to heal several thousand. Already their losses had to be close to ten percent and the battle had only begun. Air support was the only thing keeping this offensive alive, and a pyrrhic victory was the best they could hope – a bloody victory that would end in no more than a stalemate. And a stalemate was a victory for Humanity….

“The landing zone is secure as it’s going to get,” Gabriel radioed. “Begin bringing in the armour…”