Fat Vampire Value Meal (Books 1-4 in the series) (54 page)

“He looks presidential, I’ll give him that,” said Reginald. “Or Deaconish. Whatever the term is.”
 

Months ago, back when Maurice had made his final speech as Deacon — the speech after which the entire assembly had tried to kill him — he’d called for a leader to rise and take control of the Council. The Vampire Nation was descending into chaos, he said, and it needed a brain to steer it away from the abyss. Maurice had known that the leader that Council chose would probably be Charles. It was okay (though not ideal) because at the time, Charles had seemed better than leaderlessness… but in the intervening months, Maurice had begun to wonder. Reginald had begun to wonder, too.
 

Maurice shifted in his seat, then turned to Reginald. “We knew this was coming, but I still keep asking myself: ‘Is it better to have a nation of vampires who kill and rampage at random, or a nation of vampires who kill and rampage under the direction of a total asshole?’ ”
 

“It’s the eternal question,” said Reginald. “Like the sound of one hand clapping.”
 

“It sounds like this,” said Nikki, turning and clapping her palm against the hand Reginald had extended.

“That’s cheating.”
 

“Yeah, well,” said Nikki. “Armageddon and all.”
 

Charles put his hands on the stone ledge around the Deacon’s box, looking out across the assembly. He tapped the stack of papers on the ledge, then held them in front of his face. He was going to read his speech from them. Reginald couldn’t help but feel annoyed. Couldn’t Charles have bothered to memorize a speech? He was about to become the most powerful vampire in the western world, and he was totally phoning it in.
 

But then Charles held the papers over his head and tore them in half.
 

“Ah, very original,” said Maurice. “Tearing paper. That means he’s a rebel.”

“Now he’s going to say that old rules don’t apply,” said Nikki. “Just watch.”
 

“The old rules of the Vampire Nation no longer apply,” Charles said, his voice booming across the crowd.
 

Nikki raised an eyebrow at Maurice and Reginald.

“What a cock,” said Maurice, staring daggers at the screen.

Karl shushed them.
 

But it was true, what Charles said. The old rules
didn’t
apply. Under Logan, the Vampire Nation had been organized and efficient, but that had been before vampirekind had met its maker — quite literally — on a hilltop in Germany. Before the hilltop encounter, the most important issues in front of vampires had been feeding and sex and fashion. Today, after being handed the evolve-or-die edict, the key issue was survival itself. The problem was that everyone had different ideas of what “survive” meant. Charles’s idea seemed to involve forming gangs, killing, turning, and general mayhem.
 

In his mind, Reginald heard Claire saying,
There’s a great change coming. A war, between humans and vampires.
Claire didn’t think she’d been telling the future when she’d said that, but her blood and her pedigree suggested otherwise. And now, the changes at Council and the multiplying murders in the country’s streets were bearing her out.
 

“Over the past year, we have been led by an impotent leader…” Charles said.
 

Maurice objected, adding that Charles should ask his mother if Maurice were impotent.
 

“… and during that time, we’ve lost our way. We’ve lost our identity. How many of you have begun to question your power since the Ring of Fire incident? How many of you have been afraid?” He didn’t wait for the assembly to reply. Instead, he screamed, “
Why are you afraid? You are VAMPIRES!”
 

The audience began to murmur its agreement.
 

“I have been trying to steer this Council back onto the tracks. I have been organizing our soldiers. I have been strategizing, not sitting on my hands. The Deacon of this Council is still, officially, Maurice Toussant. And today I ask you: do you want to allow him to
continue
to rule you… wherever he might be hiding?”

The crowd booed and jeered.
 

“I say it’s time for a change!” Charles continued. “I say it’s time to turn this Nation away from fear! I say that we…”
 

There was suddenly a loud banging noise and a flurry of activity. Every head in the room turned to look toward the back of the arena, away from Charles.
 

The camera swiveled.
 

The entrance to the Council chamber had blown open. The set of doors leading to the outside were mangled, with giant twisted holes where the locks used to be. Four rows of helmeted vampires wearing body armor were pouring into the room through the doors, taking up stations around the edges of the arena and pointing strange wand-like devices at the vampires in front of them. There were dozens of men rushing in, then scores, then hundreds. The flow was enormous, and soon the room was more helmets than hair and heads. All of the soldiers — they
had
to be soldiers — were dressed the same: each wore a bright red helmet bearing some sort of an insignia. Their armor and boots were black. The wand-like things they held were also black. Nobody seemed to know what the wands were, but all had concluded they were worth stepping away from, and they did, many with their hands up.

The camera swiveled to the Deacon’s box. Charles and Todd Walker were still in the same positions, stock still, their eyes wide with shock.

The camera swiveled back, then panned the room.

Once the red-helmeted vampires were equally spaced around the arena, a final figure in the same gear marched through the mangled doors and headed for the center of the assembly. This one wasn’t holding a wand, but the vampires parted in front of him anyway. But when the newcomer was halfway toward the middle of the room, a shout came from one of the corners. The camera jerked toward the noise. Several vampires had decided to seize one of the armored vampires, and the camera watched as one of the assembly members clung to the soldier’s head and neck, trying to scratch and bite. Another vampire was wrapped around him, attempting to go for his legs.
 

There was a blue flash and a snapping noise like the pop of a bug zapper, and both of the attackers puffed into gray ash.

The red-helmeted vampire shrugged his shoulders, adjusting himself, and then resumed his post without ceremony: his back to the wall, his wand out. But fear had already started to spread, and the entire room began to shimmer with activity. Vampires, seeing what they were facing, began to panic. There was sparring and pushing and the blurring of motion. Another of the wand devices went off, and three more vampires on the opposite wall turned to ash. Vampires began to scream, to yell, to climb into the rafters. Everyone was rushing toward the doors.

But then there was another loud banging noise, this one deep like a cannon. Every vampire in the room froze. All heads — and the streaming video’s frame — swiveled to focus on the man who had been walking to the center of the room. During the melee, he’d grabbed a chair and was standing atop it, holding a pistol over his head. The barrel smoked. Above him, rock dust filtered down from a bullet hole in the ceiling. He used his free hand to remove his helmet, revealing a head of short, blonde hair and a narrow, serious face. He tossed the helmet to one of the soldiers.
 

“The vampire revolution has broken out!” he yelled. “The hall is filled with six hundred men. Nobody is allowed to leave!”
 

Watching in the Chateau, Reginald leaned toward Karl’s ear.

“Is that Timken?” he whispered.

A serious look on his face, without taking his eyes off the screen, Karl nodded.
 

Timken lowered the pistol and slipped it into a holster at his waist. Every eye was on him, including that of the camera. He met those eyes, looking around the room slowly, taking his time. The camera zoomed in, giving a nice close up. He looked neither nervous nor triumphant.
 

“This,” said Timken, patting the pistol on his side and speaking in a loud, commanding voice, “is a regular gun with bullets tipped in silver. But in case anyone hasn’t yet figured it out, the weapons in the hands of the Sedition Army are much more dangerous. They fire a high-pressure burst of silver particles, like a grenade that can be detonated over and over again. If one is fired near you and you aren’t wearing gear, there’s a good chance that a speck of sliver will penetrate your heart. And you’ve seen what happens then.” He gestured toward the piles of ash.
 

He turned to face the camera. The shot was close, with good sound, and made Timken look both proud and unstoppable. Reginald found himself wondering if the cameraperson was a plant, placed in the assembly ahead of time.
 

“My name is Nicholas Timken,” he said. “I lead this group in revolution over the established order of the defunct Vampire Council. We don’t want to hurt anyone, but we will if we must. We are not, by nature, anarchists or subversionists. I am truly sorry that I have to introduce myself to the Vampire Nation this way. But my hand was forced. You see what this ‘
government
’ has become.” He said the word with venom, as if it were slimy to the touch.
 

Timken extended a hand toward the Deacon’s box, where Barkley continued to stare. Several Sedition Army soldiers had come up behind him, their wands at the ready.

“You have before you Councilman Charles Barkley, who took the helm of this Nation as fear spread among our people. Then he fostered that fear, making it grow. And today, he wants to lead you legitimately. But his government — his ‘legitimacy’ as a leader — is a farce. I have tried to contact Mr. Barkley and those in his regime. I have tried diplomacy. I have pursued action via the normal legal channels, but the system has broken, and the channels have broken with them. My concerns have not been heard, and so in front of you all today, here they are.”
 

Timken took a breath, stood taller.

“Councilman Barkley is a criminal! Your Deacon lives, yet Barkley has the audacity to tell you what to do. And look what you have done — what we have
all
done! — under that leadership. We have become animals! We hide in the sewers and we pop up like boogeymen, like carnival horrors. Did you know that the humans have been training forces to fight us for centuries? Did you know that only the most fragile balance keeps us from outright war? Did you know that we face a fight on two fronts — from the so-called ‘fallen angels’ on the right and the humans on the left? Of
course
you don’t know those things. Mr. Barkley didn’t tell you. Or perhaps, Barkley didn’t understand himself that actions always have consequences. ‘Smash and grab,’ that’s his plan… and damn the consequences.
 

“I have tried to make myself heard, for the good of us all. For the salvation — the
triumph!
— of our proud race. But I have been ignored. So today, I will not be ignored. I will tell you what Barkley has not, and it’s this: the humans know we exist. Not all of them, of course, but a few that matter. And right now, thanks to Mr. Barkley’s actions, a trained squad of killers known as the Anti-Vampire Taskforce is preparing to engage us. We cower from them. We cower from the Ring of Fire. We cower from all sides, like rats in a trap. Why?”

He took a slow, dramatic breath and scanned the room.

“Vampires of the proud Vampire Nation! You have lived like barbarians. You have resorted to an existence like that of animals. Is this how you wanted to spend your eternity? The day I became a vampire was the proudest day of my life. Was it yours? And if it was, is
this
the existence you asked for? Is
this
the future you want for yourself?”
 

Timken stopped talking, giving every vampire watching a few quiet moments to answer the questions for themselves. Nobody had been even reasonably content under Barkley. They had survived
despite
Barkley’s incompetence.
 

The camera zoomed out, panning the room. The video drove home Timken’s message:
This chaos, this destruction, this vagabond and barbarian life — this is what awaits you under Barkley’s rule.
 

“We have come in force, willing to kill every member of this Council and assembly if needed, because it was the only way to be heard, the only way to wrestle power from these barbarians. But this slippery descent into madness stops here. Starting today, this farce of a Council does not rule the Vampire Nation.
We
do. But this is not a takeover. We are not conquerors. We are mere stewards of the power that Barkley held. We will take these criminals into custody. We will clean up this structure. But then we will relinquish our throat-hold on this government and we will leave it to you — to the people of the proud Vampire Nation — to choose your own fate.”
 

Murmurs began around the room. Even across the ocean, the vampires in the Chateau could sense the change in the room’s mood.

“In one month’s time, we will hold the free election that was never conducted when ‘Councilman’ Barkley and his cadre drove the Deacon out of power and attempted to assassinate him,” said Timken. “And at that election, you may — if you wish — choose to elect Barkley as your Deacon. You may choose to keep me on as your leader. Or you may find another. I can promise you a smooth and fair transition of power into the hands that you choose.”
 

Timken unholstered his pistol, then pointed it at Barkley. Barkley ducked, but Timken was merely using it to point, and to send a message.
 

“This ends tonight!” Timken shouted. “We are doing what needed to be done, and when we are finished, you will decide whether you want to live as cowards or rise as gods. The choice is yours.”
 

Suddenly, Timken raised his gun hand over his head and fired another shot into the ceiling.