Seconds to Midnight: A Maiden of Midnight Prequel

Destiny- Day Eight

The whistle of a bomb fast approaching had me throwing up a lazy shield, deflecting it into a nearby trench, as Cain and I strode toward the war tent, waving away the group of rather useless generals sent to monitor our progress. My cousin winced at the explosion, and the smell that arose with it. The smell of enemy bodies, hundreds of them, all thrown into pits to rot. The bomb I’d just tossed away had revealed one of those pits.

The Demonic-beings in the trench gaped at the hole beneath them, a group of them laughing, one of them spitting atop the bodies before a wave of my power covered the hole once more.

I hid my own disgust at the smell with a smirk, holding open the curtain door for Cain, who ducked underneath, shaking ash and dirt from his hair. It tumbled onto the dirt flooring with a pattering that sounded like earthy rain after a long drought. Summoning a glass of water, he rinsed his mouth out, spitting into the corner of the tent before offering the glass to me. I shook my head, hiding the frown that creased my forehead.

A thin layer of the stuff coated my entire body, seeping into every crevice, turning my black hair a streaked mix of white and brown. Ash, blood, mud and the sulfuric burning of bombs and chemicals, wafting over from the battlefield five kilometres away. Death and decay; I could taste it in every breath, hear it in the cries of pain or battle shouts around me, and feel it clinging to my shoulder, following close behind everywhere I went, like a hideous shadow I could not be rid of. From Cain’s haunted expression, he felt the same, glancing over his shoulder to the tent entrance, reassuring himself that it was safe. There’d been six assassination attempts on my cousin and I, every single Assassin sent by the Mercuri Royals. Eyeing my phone, and the date, I hissed. We’d been here only a week. It felt like an eternity already, even with the delay in reaching here.

After the order to go to Italy, Zeella had awoken us that night to give us a new order. We were to head to Versailles first, where our first battle had been.

We’d gone dutifully, dressed in armour, Cain shaking like it was his first time fighting, and then entered that battlefield.

I slid underneath a coil of barbwire, dropping into the trench below, reaching up to grab the knife I’d kept between my lips before plunging it through a nearby soldier, his body dropping to the ground. He cried something out in French that I didn’t hear over the constant roar of instructions in my mind, and like a whirlwind, like a weapon, I kept moving. Duck here, plunge a sword there, trip a man down there- Every prompt came from the Dome training, piercing my thoughts until I realised the mentors were right. In the midst of battle, you really did become an extension of your weapon. Inferos’ silver blade was dulled by the gleam of blood, the weapon singing out at all the death and destruction.

Body after body fell as I invaded the Versailles Trenchline, my brain keeping track of the constant movement around me. Defend, attack, hide, attack, attack, attack- A hand clapped down on my shoulder at the same time Cain dropped down beside me, having found me in the maze-like tunnels the French army had built under the instruction of their leaders. His touch snapped me out of something, the sound of battle dying away, revealing the silent night.

“Des, we should go back,” he said in Demonic, his eyes darting overhead to one of the planes that swooped low, looking for enemies. The both of us stilled, hoping the thin netting overhead, covered in branches and mud, would be enough to conceal us. It was, the plane vanishing over the horizon. His face was pale in horror, but he nodded stiffly to me as I argued, “No! Not until we kill every last person here! The leader must die tonight, or we’ll lose this region!”

Later that night, the French leader had fallen, along with seven-hundred-and-thirty-two-thousand casualties, most of them civilians- Just numbers on a battlefield.

As a gift for my show of skill, Zeella had sent us here to Italy, where I could get a taste for what he called ‘real battle’. I was just glad to be pitting myself against things that weren’t weighed down by human minds and mortal bodies. Immortal opponents were so much more fun!

My power activated the wards around us, silencing the world outside, and Cain fell heavily into the narrow cot pressed against the tent wall, ignoring the flashing message on the screen that was nestled into our table, groaning, “Hell below, can they let us sleep for a bloody day?” Why would he want to sleep? I didn’t want to miss out on a second of this! The battles were better than any Dome simulation, the constant fight for life more invigorating than training sessions.

Striding to the table, preferring to stave away the horror and exhaustion by refusing to stop moving, I tapped on the message. It was in Italian, a message intercepted from the Mercuri Clan by one of Harva’s spies. Lional had been the one to forward it to us, although I didn’t doubt the Manor would have read it and come to their own conclusions first. This was just another way for Zeella to see what I would do with the information.

“Interesting…” I purred slyly, the tent silent. Glancing to Cain, I sighed heavily when I saw he was asleep, his chest rising and falling, his arm slumped over his eyes. Summoning a small rock, I flicked it toward him, my cousin sputtering to life with a cry, looking around the room, his hand resting on the dagger that was pinned between him and the wall. Glaring at him, I repeated, “Spostamento del fronte di guerra. King andrà a combattere. La regina rimarrà con la figlia.” Rubbing at his face, he scowled like he’d had a stroke, before groaning, “What the Hell does that mean? I got something about the King and Queen.”

Sometimes I forgot that Cain wasn’t a master of languages. He had been the one to teach me them, but he never bothered to remember himself. Once I knew the language, he would forget it and move onto the next one.

My childhood education, before my mother’s death, consisted of learning as many languages as possible, since, back then, I was to be seen as the diplomat for the Manor when I grew up.

Italian, German, French, several African languages, Mandarin, Russian, all of the European languages, Faereveyn… The list went on and on, to well over two hundred of them. I’d accompanied Zeella on trips around the world, often bringing Cain with me, to help translate for the Manor. It was to give our enemies a false sense of security, I realised now. Nobody brought a little girl of six or seven along if they were intending on fighting.

Nobody except for the Demonic Manor. How many Kings, Queens, Emperors, Empresses, Tsar’s, Tsarina’s, Lords, Prime Ministers and Presidents had I sweetly and softly spoken to in their own languages, only to have them be murdered in their sleep that night?

I could remember at least three incidents alone.

Grinning, I translated, “Displacement of the war front. King will go to fight. The Queen will remain with her daughter.”

Cain’s eyes widened, and he shot into a standing position, striding over to examine the message. It was from one of the Mercuri Generals, a man whose death we’d confirmed today. He must have sent the message, and then been killed on the frontlines, waiting for his King.

“Hestia will be protected by whatever soldiers Radomir chooses to leave behind,” Cain mused, tapping on the camera footage from outside the Vampire clan. All was quiet outside the building, although the street beyond was wrecked, destroyed by bombs and fighting. Even now, I could see the flashing of shelling and gunfire on the camera footage.

A human man, a soldier employed to fight against the Super-Natural threat now emerging on the battlefields around the world, stumbled around the corner of a building and toward our camera, clutching at a wound to his stomach, his intestines slowly sloughing out of his body despite his best efforts to keep them within. Dropping the gun in his hand, he fell to his knees just beneath the camera, his face paler than the moon overhead. Blood pooled out from underneath him like a blanket spread beneath his body.

“Idiot human,” I muttered at the same time Cain offered a prayer for the man, giving me a disapproving look and chiding, “He’s doing his job. You cannot fault someone for that.”

“Humans should know they cannot match us on a battlefield, or anywhere. It is a suicide mission to go against us.”

Pointing fervently to the man’s dying body on the camera, Cain hissed, “If someone gets the right shot at you, Des, that COULD be you! Even after a week here, fighting, you still aren’t taking this seriously!” He was wrong! I couldn’t be killed like that, not by a mere human! I was Zeella’s BEST!

“Of course I am taking this seriously!” I argued angrily, “I just do not have the energy to waste on shedding tears and whispering prayers for every idiot that loses their life in this war! Do you understand that?!” Why could Cain not understand the hum in my blood for this? Did he not feel the excitement in his veins as well? Was he broken, weak just like Zeella and Lilith claimed?

“I don’t think you have the emotional energy to do anything, cousin,” he sighed in reply, pinching the bridge of his nose when my scent flooded with false hurt just to prove him wrong. A second later, he gave up on the fight entirely, surrendering to me to turn his attention back to the message, “That was sent two hours ago.”

“We could be in that street in an hour. It’s only half an hour from No Man’s Land,” I supplied, tapping my hip with one hand, the other opening another camera feed from a war plane circling over the city; just another hacked chunk of metal the Manor had sunk its claws into. It pierced through the clouds with ease, its thin metallic body built to withstand even the heaviest of artillery. From the schematics I could see on the screen to the left of the camera feed, it still had three of its four missiles. Currently, it was just circling in increasingly tight circles over the city, planning a drop of some kind.

The city itself was a mess. Fires sent billowing clouds of ash into the sky like smoke signals to the Heavens, while constant flashing of gunfire popped off like Hellish fireworks. Painted on the roof of a nearby school were the words ‘Help Us’. I could see a cluster of children and adults sleeping behind the words. I counted them. Sixty-six potential civilian casualties.

In the school yard, soldiers trained eagerly, just humans amongst themselves, although I could see one of Radomir’s Generals lounging on the other side of the fence, smoking a pipe. He was playing cards with another Vampire, the two of them enjoying the night together.

A General out in the open… We’d only managed to kill one of Radomir’s Generals previously; the man we’d killed today. To take another, so soon after the first, would send a very clear-cut message to our enemies. Join us, or die.

“Cain, take control of the plane for me,” I ordered firmly, my cousin jolting in surprise, lost to his own thoughts and his exhausted mind.

He moved to do as I asked, dragging a laptop out from underneath his cot and opening the correct files he needed. He’d already hacked this plane earlier, so taking control was merely slipping in and out. Within a few lines of code, he had control of the plane. Allowing it to continue circling, the pilots not even aware that they no longer were piloting their own plane, he asked me, “What do you want to do?”

“See that school there?”

I pointed to the live feed camera from the plane, the school in the peripheral. Swallowing thickly, Cain’s eyes met mine over the laptop, “Des.” I locked eyes with him, scolding, “Cain, just tell me if you see it or not.”

“I do, but I’m not-” The plane made another low circle, keeping out of range of the worst of the gunfire. If I didn’t fire soon, the plane would be out of range of that General.

“We agreed to fight this war. We promised the Manor we would win at any cost. Tonight, we are taking out another of Radomir’s Generals. The attack will send a panic through the city, which opens up a path for us to break into the Mercuri Clan base.” There, I would kill Hestia and Romalize. Their deaths would take Radomir out of the war permanently, if the rumours about their love were anything to go off of.

“I am not killing a school full of civilians, most of which are children, just to take out one man!”

“Not one man! One General, and eight soldiers!” I cried out. If I brought this news back to the Manor, Zeella would be so proud of me!

“Seven of which are human. It’s not worth it,” my cousin said firmly, moving to close the laptop. I gripped the top of it, insisting, “It takes nine players out of the war. Fire on the school building.”

“I’m not doing it.”

Wrenching the laptop from his hands, I opened the screen again, snarling, “Then I will!”

“Destiny, stop and think about thi-” My cousin’s pleading cries were cut off as I entered the code I needed, the live-feed camera on the table shifting with the plane, revealing the school. Over the comms, I could hear the pilots panicking, wondering what was happening as they scrambled to take control of the plane again, begging the Heavens to help them stop this. Rolling my eyes, I shut down the comms, Cain shouting for me to stop. I lined up the shot in seconds.

With another line of code, the missile I needed was fired.

The Vampire General didn’t even have time to react, the live-feed camera from the plane showing the massive explosion as it shook the street, rubble and debris flying high into the air, the smoke clouding the camera. Cain stared in horror at the footage, dropping his head into his hands.

Then, with a smirk on my face, I brought the plane down on top of it, just for good measure.