The Blessed and the Damned

PROLOGUE

Dane reached down to stroke the growling shadow hound lying beside his bed. He could feel the ruff on her neck had risen. He squinted in the dark and saw Rocket, the huge male, pacing beside the door. A shiver shot through him. It had been two years since his family fled the destruction of the Louistranan Embassy in New Cali. They missed the last plane out, so his father, a retired general had taken him and his mother on a desperate overland journey. That was all in the past: ancient history, or at least the fading climate of fear and desperation had made it seem so.

This was home. They were safe here in their old house. Yet the hounds' reactions had his fourteen-year-old's imagination and fears rising. He slid out of bed and got his carbine off the shelf, shoving mags of ammo into his pocket. It was the same one his father had taught him to use during their flight. Dane opened the door and the male hound bounded out snarling. Melody, the bitch, kept close to him. The beasts had an uncanny intelligence, although his father's old friend who had developed them insisted they were simply animals and not some new variety of sapient. The male stood fourteen hands at the shoulder and the female twelve. They had a dense wiry undercoat of black hair and a softer upper coat that shaded from steel-shaving grey to pale ash.

He paused at the landing and looked down into the small section of the living room that he could see from there. The glimmer of the television, still switched on despite the nightly closedown, bathed the room in a pale, flickering light that showed him nothing. His father tended to fall asleep in his chair these days with the controller on his lap.

Dane crept down slowly, his fear amplifying each tiny creak to an unbearably loud groan. He cradled his gun in one arm and kept his hand tangled in Melody's ruff. He wanted to call out to his parents, but he was too frightened to speak. His father had also taught him that noise would give away his position and he was to keep silent if he thought something was wrong.

A slurping sound broke the tense silence. He heard Rocket give that peculiar, rumbling snarl of his and then bodies crashed into furniture. Now Dane ran, leaping down the stairs, forgetting every lesson his father had ever taught him about stealth. When he reached the bottom, he hit the light switch and Melody launched herself. Dane froze for an instant at the sight that greeted him. Four lesser bloods had his father pinned in the chair. One had sunk its fangs deep in his father's throat while three others sucked from his arms. Rocket worried a fifth and Melody had gone for the sixth.

Bones cracked like the report of a rifle as Rocket's teeth shattered the cervical vertebrae of his foe: the sound snapped Dane out of his terrified reverie. The big hound rounded to help his mate. Dane raised the carbine to his shoulder just as he had been taught and blew the brains out of the one on his father's throat. The other three abandoned their meal and charged him. Half-blinded from the tears in his eyes, Dane took aim as best he could and opened fire.

"Filthy slurps!"

The only way to stop a lesser blood with a carbine was with a head-shot. They bounded toward him with fangs bared, heedless of the carbine leveled at them. Dane stood his ground, his ears ringing as he emptied his gun, showering the vampires with lead, littering the walls with the liberated contents of their skulls. None of them reached him.

He turned and ran upstairs to his mother's room, slamming another mag into the carbine as he moved. Her door was ajar. He pushed the door open with the carbine and almost screamed. She lay nude in the middle of the bed, her skin gray and pale, a large male rode her while another watched. The one watching turned toward Dane.

"Hello, Dane."

Dane went hollow inside and he swallowed, "Uncle Abram…"

"Put the gun down, Dane. You can't get all of us."

"I can start with you."

Abram Jayce laughed, showing his long fangs. "I serve the Glistening One. You can't stop us, boy. We're not lesser bloods like the ones downstairs."

Dane brought the carbine up again, his finger tightening on the trigger. Something grabbed him from behind and he went down, the gun discharging as he fell. Fangs plunged into the boy's neck and shoulder. He screamed, kicking and twisting, but kept his grip on his carbine, cutting Abram Jayce's loud, mocking laughter short with a swift burst of lead slugs to the face. He failed to see the one who had been raping his mother's corpse come from the other side until it tore the carbine from his hands. Then there were three on him and his life was fleeing.

Two huge shapes burst into the room. The last thing he saw was Melody and Rocket tearing into the vampires.

GODWAR CENTRAL

The Blessed and the Damned

PROLOGUE