The Rising - Chapter 109: Stein

Captain Stein was ravenous. Twenty-four hours as a vampire hadn’t been kind to him.

Whether it was the burning in his stomach that went away then came back twice as bad an hour later or his so-called brothers taunting him, he had no one who knew what he was going through and no one on his side. Everyone he knew was trained to kill him.

They had held him in a bare hall, chained to the thick heating pipes. When the sun rose, the soldiers entered the room and opened the blinds and windows. All day long he had to watch the sunlight edge its way across the laminated floor towards him. It was mid-afternoon when one of the more sympathetic members of the squad entered the room to bring him a bottle of water and shut the curtains just before the deadly sunlight reached his body.

The same soldiers that taunted him were sitting across from him in the helicopter as it floated over the trees and fields of the countryside towards the freeway intersection. They all stared at him with fear and hatred all over their faces, their hands gripping their automatic rifles, ready to take him out with a single shot should he make a move they didn’t like. Most of them had known members of the crew on board Alpha One and Alpha Two and now that Alpha Three was airborne, they swore they wouldn’t let another vampire take down one of their gunships.

Stein was certain they would kill him as soon as they discovered him at the mountain base after the detective and his friends escaped. It was only after they realised they could use him as a sniffer dog that his life was spared. For what it was worth.

The detective.

The motherfucker who turned me into an animal.

Stein knew that where they were going he would be dumped with the rest of the rebirths, the people who would think themselves lucky when they realised they hadn’t perished in the plane crash but would soon wish they were dead. He looked down at his boots. His new feet had finished growing back just after they arrived at Hartley House. It amazed him how similar they were to his old feet that Detective Ryder sliced off in the base the night before.

He thought of the mission ahead for everyone else aboard the helicopter. It was a joke. He couldn’t believe how far The Brotherhood had strayed from their true intentions. The intentions of the founding members hundreds of years ago had been to protect the human race from the vampires at any cost. Now that had been lost in five hundred years of bureaucracy. The treaty. The Costas report. Nothing but bullshit that got in the way of ridding the world of pure evil.

All this talk of coexistence was crap. The Brotherhood had not put enough effort into the treatment that would kill every vampire. They had become almost subservient to the vampires and now, there they were, on their way to perform their role in the next phase of the treaty.

Baby-sitting.

As the gunship glided over the crowded road below, Captain Stein was hit with a familiar feeling in his mind. It was something that he hadn’t felt since the night before, when the detective had bitten him and turned him into a vampire.

The detective.

Stein felt a warmth flow into his arms. He yanked his arms up and tore them free from the handcuffs that were holding him in his seat. Before the soldiers could fire off a shot, Stein had thrown himself free of his captors and was falling towards the ground below.

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