Ancient Evil (The First Genocide Book 1) (3 page)

“Give us a fucking break, Duchess, there
are only six of us here. Just get down from the chair and talk to us, ya daft
bint.” Jonni had called Diana “Duchess” ever since he had heard that her father
was a count, earl, peer or something like that. No one could be bothered to
check which.

“Humph. I’ll have you know that at least
ten signed up,” she muttered as she got down from the chair. “Fine, get your
tin, tie your legs together and let’s go.”

Having his leg tied to Finn meant that
Jonni Brown could only goosestep with one of his legs, so he tried to make it
more noticeable by shouting things like “Heil” and “Schnell” and even
“Luftwaffe” and “Strudel.” Dieter quietly simmered while pretending to ignore
Jonni’s increasingly obnoxious behavior. Finn tried to perfect invisibility. He
was not having much luck. He was too embarrassed to even attempt to restrain
the irrepressible Mr. Brown. 

By the time they ordered their drinks in
the second pub it seemed Dieter’s intransigence was going to win out over
Jonni’s increasingly desperate jibes, when Jonni stooped to the last of his
schoolboy taunts and said, “Hey, Dieter, are you ignoring me because you found
out about your mother giving me a blow job down by the docks in Leipzig?”

Dieter’s head snapped around and he said,
“Are you suggesting zat my mother is,” then he took a deep breath, roared, “a
whore?”

Jonni’s eyes flashed in triumph as everyone
turned to watch. He looked around with a big shit-eating grin and said, “No,
not at all, I couldn’t really call her a whore. You see, I didn’t pay for it, I
just joined the queue. She was giving them out for free.”

Dieter roared and punched Jonni in the face
with his massive fist.

Finn and Rebecca, who had been frantically
disengaging themselves from their partners during the exchange, jumped out of the
way as the bouncer stepped in and frog-marched them to the door. Finn could
hear Jonni cackle, “Look, Dieter, we are being frog-marched, ha ha,
frog-marched, you Nazi bastard. I bet you hate the frogs too.”

Finn heard the bouncer threaten to call the
police if they did not make themselves scarce.

“Interesting friend you have there,”
Rebecca said. Finn looked around and was surprised to see she was looking at
him.

“Sorry?”

“I said, interesting friend you have
there.”

“Ah, yeah. I'm not sure about friend, but
certainly interesting. Sorry you lost your partner.”

“Oh, no problem, Dieter is sweet, just a
little dull. His main topic of conversation is Dieter. Your pal there certainly
made the night memorable in his own offensive, xenophobic way.”

“Yes, offensive and memorable — hard to
forget, really. No matter how hard you try, believe me. I don’t really know why
Dieter reacted the way he did, Leipzig is landlocked. It doesn’t even have
docks.”

Rebecca looked at him quizzically and laughed
a little. She paused for a second or two while she considered her words.

“So, you’re Finn right? I heard you are
some sort of Wunderkind?”

“Wunderkind? Sounds like Dieter is rubbing
off on you. Don’t get me wrong, I like that term so much more than special
child.”

“But, you did get your first degree at
sixteen, right?”

“Well, yeah, it was kind of hellish; the
other students hated me, or saw me as some sort of freak.”

“Well, you don’t look too freakish to me.
Give me a little spin so I can see you better.” He just looked at her and then
lifted his arms a little. “Oh God, don’t actually do it. That was a joke.” He
quickly dropped his arms to his sides. “The last thing we need now is for you
to start whirling like Maria von Trapp on top of the Matterhorn. I think our
ejected compatriots used up all of the bouncer’s tolerance for students this
week.”

“I wasn’t going to spin. I knew you were
joking,” Finn lied.

“Uh huh.” She narrowed her eyes. “Anyway,
it looks like we both lost our partners … want to continue together? You can
tell me about your freakish life as we go. We are raising money for a good
cause, after all.”

“Yeah, sure. Umm, this is a little
embarrassing, but do you remember what the charity was?” he said.

“Fuck knows, let’s drink.”

So began the best few months of Finn’s
troubled life.

The
cobble hit Clea in the center of her forehead. Blood poured down her face,
obscuring her uncanny blue eyes.

One of the boys shouted, “Mongrel,” and
threw another rock. It missed her and clattered against the stone wall that
closed off her end of the alley. The other end of the alley, the one that
opened to the street and freedom, was blocked by the eight young boys currently
tormenting her. They started to chant, “Mongrel, mongrel.”

She covered her face and sank to the
cobbles. She hugged her knees and tried to retreat within herself until the
children got bored of beating her. Calling for help would do no good. A wall of
sound throbbed down the alley from the street. It was the time of Renewal, and
the chaos of the celebration would prevent anyone from hearing her cries, vocal
or mental.

She heard a scuffle, and the shouting
stopped. She wiped the blood from her face and looked up. Her little brother
Caleb had pushed through the group of other boys. He stood over her, facing the
other boys, a furious look on his face.

He was her little brother in age only.
Caleb was ten but looked older. He was big — slightly taller than her already —
even though she was five years his senior.

The leader of the pack, a boy named Ilba,
spoke. “Look lads, the Throwback has come to save his mongrel sister. More fun
than we expected.”

She grabbed Caleb’s leg to stop him from
lunging forward. The neighborhood boys knew how to goad him; they had being
doing it all of their lives. The bitter truth was that Caleb was a “throwback.”
His noticeable brow ridge and sloping forehead were in stark contrast to the
smooth, vertical foreheads of the rest of his people. He looked as if he had
skipped the generations of refinements that the Host had bred into their
people. His neck and shoulders were already starting to thicken, and Clea
feared as he matured he would look even more like the images of their primitive
ancestors from the time of Emergence, more like the wild tribes that the Host
had refused to take in.

The boys hated Clea for a different reason,
although she too was different from them. Her build and features were current
Guest standard; however, her coloring was the same as the some of the Host. Her
golden hair, fair skin and pale blue eyes were in stark contrast to the light
brown skin, brown eyes and dark brown hair of the rest of the Guest.

“Leave us alone, you cowardly little
turds.” Caleb was enraged by their taunts and by her humiliation. “Come on, you
cowards, I will fight you one at a time and beat you all.”

The boys looked to Ilba, their leader, to
see if he would take up the challenge of single combat. Ilba was a bully but he
was not stupid. He shook his head slightly and they kicked at the floor of the
alley to loosen more cobbles. Through her grip on his leg, Clea could feel
Caleb tremble a little. His attempt to even the odds a little had failed. She
tried not to think about the damage that a hail of cobbles would do to them.
The Host healers were unlikely to spend much time and effort patching them up
if they were seriously injured; they were both too flawed. This was serious.

“Get down,” she said and ducked her head.

A flight of rocks flew at Caleb. One
glanced off his temple. He sat down heavily, stunned.

Clea peeked over her knees in time to see
Ilba jerk his head forward and swear. He touched the back of his head with his
hand. His hand came back into view covered in blood. He spun around and
shouted, “Who did that?”

The other boys parted and Clea could see
Hael standing near the open end of the alley. Hael was her brother’s best
friend — his only friend, really. Her only friend too, she supposed.

Hael’s older brother Lucan had once
pretended to be her friend, until she denied him her body. Hael’s little
brother Bral was just a little too young for her to consider him a friend, but
at least he did not shun her.

Hael and his brothers were ideal specimens
of their people, the Guest. The right size, the right shape and the right
color. They were all smart and strong too. Unlike her and Caleb, there was
little doubt that he and his brothers would be allowed to breed, even if they
achieved little in service to the City and Empire. Caleb’s appearance meant he
would need to do something monumental to be allowed to breed. Even then, if his
children had many of his physical attributes, it was unlikely they would make
it out of the birthing room. It was a mystery that he himself had made it out.
The same held true for her to a lesser extent.

Hale spoke. “Ilba and his Insignificants.
You boys run out of nice games to play?”

Ilba shook the blood from his hand. He
looked a little less belligerent — not to say that he looked ready to back down
either. He would never back down in front of the other boys.

Ilba needed to walk a fine line. Clea knew
that other boys grudgingly admired Hael and would have gladly followed him if
Hael had allowed them to.

“What did you throw that rock for?” said
Ilba.

“I was just joining in the fun. Did I get
the game wrong?” Hael was holding another rock and tossed it lightly in the
air, it hung suspended for a few seconds then dropped back into his hand.
Ilba’s gang nudged each other. This was an impressive feat for an uninitiated
child. Even moderate feats of levitation were notoriously difficult for one of
the Guest to master. The Host, of course, had less difficulty with such things.
“Who am I supposed to throw at next?”

Clea saw Ilba’s shoulders slump. Ilba would
have little doubt about how this would end, but the expectations of his peers
drove him onward. “This is none of your business, Hael.”

“Oh, but I think it is; you see, Caleb and
Clea there happen to be my friends.”

“Friends? With a mongrel and a throwback?
Come, Hael, if you want friends, there are better people to be friends with.”

Hael cocked his head. “I can’t think of
anyone I would rather be friends with.” Hael paused then an expression of
understanding crossed his face. “Ah, I think I understand. You are suggesting
that you and your chums here would be better friends to me than Caleb and
Clea.” Ilba straightened a little, some hope entered his posture. Hael
continued, “I think not, I have higher standards than that.”

The other boys looked from Hael to Ilba and
then to back to Hael. The die was cast.

Ilba rushed Hael, who sidestepped the
lunge. He pivoted and drove his elbow into the back of Ilba’s bloody scalp.
Ilba hit the ground and lay still.

“Well, boys, who’s next?”

They edged around Hael and into the street
behind him, leaving their leader lying face down on the cobbles. Hael did not
glance at them as they left. His eyes were on Clea. He winked, then strode
forward to check Caleb’s condition.

Clea smiled back and blinked the blood from
her eyes.

Hael helped Clea support Caleb as they made
their way back to their unusually large and well-appointed home.

Clea and Caleb’s father had met their
mother, Sela, after he had been discharged from a rather mediocre military
career. He had lost a leg in the Eastern Campaign and was not deemed valuable
enough to have a Host healer regenerate it for him. He and Sela had been
approved for marriage and breeding a month later. Prior to meeting him, Sela
had been a well-known actress and had performed for the Emperor himself. The
neighborhood gossips spread many vicious rumors about how Sela ended up being
granted such a large home, considering her obvious lack of success in breeding
optimal children. One particularly nasty rumor concerned the timing of Caleb’s
birth, which some claimed occurred ten months following the demise of his father.

As they approached the house they noticed a
palanquin on the street outside Caleb and Clea’s home. It was fairly plain with
a blank shield on the door indicating its owner was traveling incognito. The
owner must have already been inside the enclosed box, as the Feral slaves who
carried the chair lifted it and proceeded quickly down the street before the
children reached the relative sanctuary of home.

The presence of the palanquin was unusual —
they were normally only used by an extremely important Guest or one of the
Host, neither of which should have had any business with Sela. However, this
was the time of Renewal and anything could happen.

Once they were inside, Sela made such a
fuss over her injured children and their savior Hael that Hael and Caleb
quickly forgot to tell her about the palanquin, as children often do.

Clea was barely old enough to remember, but
she knew very well who her mother’s visitor had been and counted herself lucky
to have been out during his visit. Even if that meant that she had been busy
being pelted with cobbles. Anything was better than being home when he came to
visit.