I woke slowly, I felt so very weak, so powerless, it was as though the weight of the weight had fallen upon my shoulders. Tonight mankind would fall, I was under no illusion as to humanities chances, I was also under no illusions that I could no longer rely on Redfern to save me, the endgame had begun and it was going to begin with a sacrifice. Mine.
I get up and walk to one of the labs, so much money had gone into preparing for this day and I could afford no interruptions. I returned with a hypodermic syringe full of a venomous looking chemical, slowly I inject it into Holly's arm, it's only a tranquillizer but I still feel guilty though it is mixed with a slight bit of pride – it took me years to get that tranq right .
I pass a clock on the way to the armoury, 8pm, 4 hours till it starts. I arm myself quickly, kevlar armour almost a second skin after so long. I ache to take the blades but I will return for those later, now I have another lab to visit, the lab at the very heart of this facility.
I walk quickly but as I pass the clock I see quarter of an hour has already passed, I walk faster.
The lab I want is soon in sight, I place my hand on the display and stand with my eye in front of the scanner.
"Dusk to Dawn, the Hunter."
The blast door on the lab opens with a pneumatic hiss. Inside they are there, the culmination of my work. I don the more technologically advanced armour over my kevlar, it is a bit heavy but as I step onto the board the weight seems to disappear. The board hums into life and begins to hover a few inches from the ground. The hoverboard was easy to construct, I'd downloaded the plans from the internet, even with the power supply mods I'd done it had cost less than a grand. It ran on zero point, I allowed myself a slight chuckle, at least it wouldn't run out of power tonight.
I passed another clock on the way to the experimental projectiles lab. It was 9 already, putting the second armour on had taken longer than I thought. I diverted course to the computer room to email Elliot and the other one again. This time with a time and a place. Then I was back on track. I collected a few weapons from the munitions department, all of it ridiculously futuristic but ludicrously effective. The one planning problem I'd had for this was how I would fit all the weapons into holsters on my body, inevitably a specialized few had had to be incorporated into the board. Again I went to the lab I'd got the tranq from, this time for something a bit stronger. Then a trip to another weapons lab and then back to the armoury, I flexed my hands as I sheathed the katanas on my back, the sheaths crossed over each other in an X. Personally I thought I looked quite cool.
Finally I went to the last lab, I put the helmet on slowly, relishing the experience, the power, this was the first time I had ever had it all on at once, even when practising.
One hastily written note explaining things to Holly and also giving directions for a full account of my tale I left the converted warehouses. On my hoverboard.
I arrived at 11. Elliot was already there as were quite a few others. Instantly I was overcome by their protests and their demands for explanation.
"Shadow, why have called us here?" Elliot was blunt. Unusual for him.
"Yeah what is this all about?" shouted another.
I placed a hand on a wrist and twisted a dial then spoke.
"QUIET." The volume from the amplifier was louder than I'd expected. They shut up. Lowering the volume somewhat I continued. "I have gathered you here today because today the Night World wages war. Tonight they shall rise up and nothing will be able to stand in their path. When you are all here I shall address you again and then take you to where the fighting should be thickest."
We waited half an hour. In that time maybe a hundred slayers had gathered.
I stood up and silence reigned.
"You are all here because you fight the Night World, some of you have fought it for years, a rare few have fought for decades. Tonight the Night World rises, it will overthrow humanity with ease and no slayers will survive once it obtains it's dominion, you will be hunted like animals because they see you as animals. I will be honest with you we shall not win. We cannot even draw. But if we do not make a stand now then our days we will be filled with feared and suspicion and doubt. If you do not fight now you will still die, it is up to you to choose how you die. Fighting for your very species or cowering under the yoke of your new masters. Ladies and gentlemen the choice is yours. Follow me and die. Or just die anyway."
All hell broke loose but I cared not. I picked up my board and walked out, they followed in twos and threes, armed to the teeth and scared out of their minds. Only a few stayed behind. Despite myself I could not help for once feeling some pride in my species.
We walked to the edge of the city and with just five minutes to spare we stopped. And there in front of us an army was charging. It numbered maybe five hundred but it didn't matter, fifty would have been enough. For these weren't just your average, werewolves, witches and shapeshifters. These were the Reapers, the Night World's crack troop and they would cut through my small army like a hot knife through butter. It turned the volume up of my amplifier.
"FORM RANKS!" I bellowed. "THOSE WITH BOWS TAKE AIM AND FIRE ON MY COMMAND" There was maybe a minute till they reached us, I took out my gauss pistol from it's holster and took careful aim then fired. One of the front rank of Reapers fell, he wouldn't be getting up. I loaded another bullet and fired again. The strange whistle that accompanied the shot was all that was audible, this time it only caught one of the werewolves in the leg, but although the wolf kept running the leg didn't, it had been sheared right off. The advancing horde still organised despite my ability to shoot them with impunity came into bow range.
"FIRE" Maybe five went down permanently the rest merely sustained flesh wounds. "LOAD... AIM... FIRE!"
Now they were nearly upon us I gave one last order before the whole matter was beyond my control.
"RETREAT, YOU KNOW THIS CITY, USE YOUR KNOWLEDGE AGAINST THEM, AMBUSH THEM, OUTFLANK THEM. BUT DO NOT SURRENDER!" And with that my ranks broke fleeing back into the city from which screams were echoing as the rest of the Night World broke loose of it's self-forged shackles. I knew that friends would be killing friends just because one was human and another not and inside I cursed the Night World for for the first time they were doing something as barbarous as humanity at it's worst.
This city had the highest slayer concentration in the world, that was why the Reapers were here. Still I had to fight, even my limited code of honour demanded I be here on the waning hours of humanities dominion.
Unlike my fleeing flock I paused and took two more shots then I too fled into the city.
On my hoverboard I managed to stay just out of range of the horde, taking shots again and again, kill after kill till I ran out of bullets. Only a fraction of their forces followed me, the rest split and began to wreak havoc amongst the populace of the city, if it was human it died.
I ducked lower, one of the witches had thrown a fireball at me, it was my first experience of combat magic and I already knew it to be more deadly than any vamp or were.
Once I ran out of bullets there were thirty left, I threw the handgun aside. My armour was slightly scorched from those few times I'd been slow to dodge, I headed for an alley, I could easily use the enclosed space to my advantage, and out of the alley something leapt, a werewolf jaws snapping at my throat. It was knocked from my board which began to hover in one spot whilst the werewolf struggled to get a purchase on my armour, I grabbed a dagger from my belt and thumbed the switch before stabbing the werewolf in the chest with it. It began to spasm, it's muscles out of control as the electrified blade played havoc with it's insides. By time I got up it had fallen, to the floor, the smell of burnt fur heavy in the air as the blades battery drained itself.
The assorted Nightworlders circled me cautiously now they'd seen that even at close range I could be lethal. It wasn't going to help them, I didn't even try and block the blades that just rebounded off my armour as a cut through them with lazy cuts, their wooden blades not even slowing my arm down as I sliced through their blade arm and torso.
Crack troops they may be but their weapons couldn't even injure me, at worst it was like being punched and even then not with much force. A simple suit of armour had defeated an army which had defeated all opposition for millennia. With wooden weapons at worst I'd be coming out of this with bruises at worst. It was so simple that noone had thought of it.
Nevertheless even with this armour I could not afford to take a beating with impunity, I clove through another one – this time one of the witches – the survivors turned and ran, one of my knives followed rapidly catching the slowest between the shoulder blades. I took the time to retrieve both knives before hopping back onto my board and looking for someone else to fight. It's odd I'd expected so much more from the Night World's finest.
With no real directions I followed the screaming, unprepared the Nightworlders were clove in two often without me slowing down, already though the streets were littered with corpses. I beheaded a vampire as I shot past. Without warning the power went out across the city, in an amazingly coordinated attack they'd taken out the generator's, there was a brief pause city wide as backup's began to kick in. No doubt the Night World with be using their night-vision to their advantage right now.
No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than I was once more knocked from my board, as I reached for a knife my arms were pinned and something began to beat upon my armour, attempting to shatter the metal.
I couldn't even see what I was being attacked by. My exoskeleton armour began to buckle. I slowly forced my arms up, the hydraulics within the suit slowly overpowering the supernatural strength of my attacker. Arms freed I grabbed it's wrists and squeezed, there was a satisfying crunch as the bones gave before I leapt to my feet and backhanded it in the face, I felt it's skull give in. Pressing a button on one of the pads on my wrist, my night vision activated. My attacker – a werewolf, currently morphed – was dead at my feet, it seemed technology had triumphed again. I glanced down at my damaged armour, fortunately none of it had actually ripped, I pressed another button, an electrical current ran through the metal while the rubber coating inside kept me safe, as the memory alloy activated the suit reformed to perfect condition.
Wearing this I realised made me practically invincible.
I'd been killing Nightworlders indiscriminately for two hours now, I had so far killed over a hundred, the ease with which I fought was slowly being displaced form my mind by a distinct unease and a minor sense of fatigue. Someone screamed in the darkness, shaking my helmeted head I set off in that direction.
I found myself cornered alongside five other slayers including Elliot. I'd been well and truly suckered, drawn in through the ease of which I'd killed I had never questioned why the Reapers had been quite so puny, now I knew, they'd arrived by HALO jump. One thousand of the Night-World's best all descending within minutes in one unified aerial display. It was glorious. It was terrifying.
Those slayers still alive had been instantly overwhelmed, as far as I knew we were all that was left, I'd got cocky, whereas I had planned to be back in the warehouse in less than three hours dawn was now fast approaching and Holly would soon be awake. I removed the last of my bullet dented armour and added it to our makeshift barricade from behind which we fired potshots to keep the enemy at bay. I removed a gun from my boot and loaded it with a dart stored within an ammo deposit within the hoverboard which was now having to run on an electrostatic field rather than a cushion of air.
I took careful aim and fired, the dart caught a vampire in the leg, within seconds cancerous tumors began to erupt across his face and body, within a minute the tumors were all that could be seen, within two he stopped moving. His fellow Reapers gave the corpse a wide berth.
I was very proud of my darts, they worked on a very simple principle, to maintain their healing and agelessness vampires had to reproduce cells rapidly and perfectly, the chemicals within the dart caused imperfect cells, with such fast and exact cellular reproduction the effects were almost instant.
I took out another dart, my last one in fact, and waited for a lull as bullets rattled overhead, finally that lull came as clips emptied and I raised myself above the barricade and took careful aim at the remaining vampire pinning us down. Then moving faster than actual thought my arm jerked and the shot went wide. Holly's bullets caught me in the chest and shoulder, throwing me back. Another slayer – I didn't know – took my place at the barricade and careful sighted Holly with his crossbow. I don't know why I did it or where I found the strength from but I leapt knocking both him and myself over the barricade, as a tried to wrestle the crossbow from his grip bullets raked us, he was dead almost instantly as the majority of an AK47's ammunition clip caught him in the throat, hear and lungs. I turned with the crossbow in my hand ready to fire at my killer as the bullets penetrated my body, I knew without thinking that I'd been shot with a pistol rather than an assault rifle. I sighted the only person with a handgun but my finger just couldn't release the bolt that would take Holly's life, it was as though I'd been bewitched. The crossbow fell limply from my hand as I collapsed to the floor. I made eye contact with Holly.
"Why?" I mouthed soundlessly as my own blood dribbled down my chin. My vision went hazy as Holly approached but I heard the screams of the surviving slayers as a grenade exploded behind the barricade, and then as a final twist of the knife in the wound my best friend of just a few hours ago stamped on my chest.
"Stupid slayer." and then boots slowly crunched gravel as they left. And then – hopefully – I finally got around to dying.
Author's Note: My longest chapter yet, anyone figure out Holly was a vamp? I know it's been ages since I last updated but I actually have a backlog of chapters to upload.