CHAPTER SEVEN

JOSIE IS MISTAKEN FOR AN IMMORTAL

Several days later at the Graveyard Nightclub, for the first time in many years, Cassidy has ordered that the club be closed as she and the guys discuss what to do about Josie.  Cassidy, Dara, Newar,  Gitan & Jake spend the day discussing Josie’s problem with all the drinking she’s doing and how obnoxious she’s been to everyone in the club.  Cassidy asks, “So what do you want to do, just kick her out of the nightclub and let her go back to being on her own again?”  Gitan, “Yeah, well it’s better than putting up with all of her shit.”  Jakes says, loudly, “Putting up with all of HER shit, what about when you went through that really rough patch 500 years ago?  We didn’t kick you to the kerb!”   That pisses Gitan off and he and Jake are both now standing nose to nose yelling at each other.  Newar, “Gee, this is great, now look what Josie’s gone and done.”

Cassidy is trying to talk to both of them and calm them down.  As this is happening Dara gets up and walks over to the bar and he pours himself a cup of coffee and begins to drink it.  Newar asks Dara, “So, what do you think of all this, what do you think should happen with Josie??”  Dara goes on drinking his coffee and ignores the question.  To get Dara’s attention Newar picks up the candle from the centre of the table and throws it at Dara.  As Dara turns around to share his thoughts with the others he sees the candle and candle holder hurtling towards his face.  Before it can connect with him, Natalia, who has just arrived and had been standing quietly listening to the heated discussion, uses her war hammer to smash both the candle and the holder into small pieces. 

After she has smashed the candle and holder this gets the attention of all of them.  Natalia verbally begins to tear strips off them for the way they are behaving.  She says, “Have you forgotten what we are.  We weren’t just trained to fight we were trained to assist people who cannot help themselves like Josie.”  This makes them all feel ashamed of their behaviour.  Natalia goes on to say, “Josie has a heavy burden on her shoulders and more on her mind than you can ever imagine.”  With that The Elder appears saying to Natalia, “THAT IS ENOUGH!!”  Natalia starts to argue with The Elder, “They really need to know this…”  Again The Elder states, “That is enough Natalia, return to New Atlantis, NOW!”  As Natalia obeys The Elder’s commands Cassidy and the guys are all trying to figure out what she was trying to tell them.  Cassidy was sitting tapping away to a tune in her head using the pencil she had in her hand.  She still has the tune in her head and begins to write lyrics to the melody she can hear.  Cassidy, “Hang on guys, I’ve got a really good idea.”  The others all turn to face Cassidy and ask what the idea is.  Cassidy says, “Give me a few days and I should complete these lyrics for a song we can do for Josie, this might get her to open up and talk to us about what she’s going through.”

Back in New Atlantis, in the war room, Natalia, who has now returned and just walked in with both of her war hammers in each of her hands. She has both blades open which indicates that she means business.  Without even saying a word or telling those who are there to leave, Natalia proceeds to throw both of the war hammers at the central core and the first one strikes the defence shield around the core.  The hammer flies off and slams into the wall on the other side of the room.  The second hammer strikes the shield and comes directly back at Natalia.  She lifts her arms up and tries to dodge the hammer but it strikes her in the ribs.  Luckily for her she is wearing the new bio-mesh but the pain is enough to bring her to her knees.  As the guards are holding her down she looks up to see The Elder standing before her and in the most impolite way she can she tells him that she will no longer carry out these orders that will bring harm to Josie and her friends.

The Elder says, “If you don’t obey you will spend the rest of your time in solitary confinement.  These are the only two choices you have.”  Natalia wrenches her arms away from the guards who are holding her and as she gets to her feet she says, “I will obey!”  The Elder tells Natalia that it is time to go to Egypt and wait there for the blood to be brought to Dr Odjit.  “You will help them to gain access to the tomb.”  The skirt that Natalia is wearing starts to wrap around her legs and becomes leather pants and at the same time three pieces of pure bio mesh appear and creates a split skirt effect around her body.   As Natalia is being handed back her war hammers and she begins to leave she turns back towards The Elder and says, “I will hate you for the rest of eternity for making me do this.” 

Meanwhile back in Melbourne Tansin’s people are already in place to spy on those who come and go from The Graveyard Nightclub.  What they have not realised is that they are not the only ones watching the nightclub.  A few buildings away Cinaed has set up her sniper post.  As she is just getting into position Cinaed is now being told by Seneca the details of their mission.  As Seneca gets to the main part of the dossier the photo that appears before her shocks her so much she says over the radio, “What is this, an fucking joke?”  Cinaed asks, “What do you mean, ‘Is this an fucking joke?’”  Seneca goes on to explain that their target is Josephine Hayley Solomon, the daughter of the world renowned archealogists Arlia & Porter Solomon.  Cinaed asks, “Weren’t you once friends with Arlia?”  Seneca, “Yes I was, very good friends and that is why this will be one of the most difficult hits I will ever have to do.”

Cassidy has just arrived home and after dropping her handbag on the couch she heads straight into the private recording studio that they have at the house.  After a few hours she has almost all the lyrics written down and she is just having difficulty writing down the music for the song. 

It is a few days later when Cassidy walks over, picks up her acoustic guitar and begins to play.  As she is doing so she doesn’t realise that the guys have now arrived home and each of them comes into the studio, picks up their instruments and one at a time begin to join in.  After a few seconds, she stops playing her guitar, stands up and begins to sing.  As they continue, the guys try different techniques and notes.  Before they know it they have come up with the perfect music to the song Cassidy has now completed. 

While Cassidy and the guys decide to go through the song one more time to get it perfect, at the University Josie is just sitting down in a shaded spot away from everyone else to have her lunch.  After eating a small portion of her lunch she hears a voice behind her say, “Do you mind if I sit down with you?”   As Josie looks up she sees Caroline standing there and thinking to herself that she doesn’t want any company at the moment she starts to say, “Sorry, I …” but she is interrupted by Kristen who has shown up at the college to see how she is doing.  “Hi, Josie, how are you?” as they shake hands.  A few moments later, whilst still shaking Kristen’s hand Josie suddenly gets chills down her spine and begins to shiver.  At the very same moment she suddenly has an overwhelming feeling of being sick to her stomach.  The last time she felt anything like this was the night at the Graveyard Nightclub when she was fooling around with the safe-stones. 

Caroline looks down at Josie and sees how sick she appears to be and asks if she is okay.  Josie replies, “I feel like I’m going to throw up!”  As Caroline helps Josie to her feet and they both try to leave Kristen will not let go of Josie’s hand.  Caroline yells at her, “Let her go, I need to take her to the first aid room.”  Kristen refuses and says in a condescending way, “What seems to be the problem, you’re not getting ill because of me are you?” 

As Josie looks back at Kristen she is suddenly able to see past the illusion and sees the true face of Kristen which is nothing more than that of a rotting corpse.  Caroline continues to pull on Josie and as she does so Josie is forced to pull on Kristen’s hand and she can see tears beginning to appear in the skin on Kristen’s lower forearm.  A few seconds later Josie is left holding what appears to be a glove but it is in fact the skin off Kristen’s lower arm and hand. 

By now Caroline has seen what is happening and she screams out, “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON???”  With that Josie drops what she has in her hand and both she and Caroline begin to run for their lives.  Kristen simply bends over, picks up the skin, slides her hand into it and watches it heal where the tears were on the arm.  As she walks away she begins to laugh in a very creepy way.  She thinks to herself, “Oops, that shouldn’t have happened, Oh well!!” 

Josie and Caroline have now reached the safety of the first aid room.  Caroline asks Josie, “Did that really happen?”  Josie is able to avoid answering the question when the first aid nurse walks in.

Now that Cassidy and the guys have finished going through the song one more time they are all trying to decide what they should call it.  Cassidy, who is now listening to the recording turns around and says to the guys, “Why don’t we just call it something very simple.”  The guys all answer at the same time, “Why don’t we just call the song ‘Josie’.”  Cassidy has a smile on her face and just nods her head ‘yes’.

Josey by Hey Monday

Cassidy goes to get a cup of coffee and the guys are left just fooling around playing their instruments.  Cassidy walks back into the studio, coffee in hand, and standing there is Keira with some documents which she says need to be signed.  Keira holds the coffee while Cassidy signs the paperwork and hands it back to her.  Keira tells them how much she loves the sound of the new song that they’ve written for Josie.  Just as Keira is leaving she turns back towards Cassidy and asks, “Do you want me to set up the equipment and should I let people know that you’re going to do a performance in the next few days?”

Newar walks over and says to Cassidy, “Why wait a few days to do it when we can do it tomorrow night?  That way we can help Josie as soon as possible.”  Cassidy, umms and ahhhs not being able to make up her mind because they have only just finished writing the music.  Newar looks back at the others and asks, “What do you all think?”  “Yeah, that sounds really cool, let’s do it tomorrow night!”  With that Cassidy agrees and asks Keira to let everyone know.  Keira asks, “Do you want me to tell Josie to come to the nightclub?”  Cassidy replies, “No, I’ll take care of that.” 

By the time Cassidy finally gets around to calling Josie, Josie has already finished classes for the day and she and Caroline are walking toward her apartment.  They are both talking about what happened earlier that day.  As they get to the main doors of the student apartments her phone begins to ring.  At first Josie ignores her phone.  Caroline asks, “Aren’t you going to get that, it might be something important?”  Josie pulls the phone out of the back pocket of her jeans and answers it.  Cassidy, “Hi Josie!” Josie answers with no feeling in her voice as if she is not all there, she then goes on to say, “Why are you ringing me?”  Cassidy says, “I thought we could talk about what happened the other night at the nightclub. If that’s alright with you?”  Josie, getting a pissed off attitude states, “NO, I don’t want to talk about what happened the other night.  Can’t you just drop it and leave it alone?”  Cassidy replies, “Yeah, sure I could do that if I didn’t care, but that’s not what friends do.” 

Cassidy continues, “Look, just come to the club tomorrow night so we can talk and after that if you still want to be lonely and on your own and alone then I’ll leave you alone.”  Josie answers, “Alright, fine, I’ll see you tomorrow night.”  She then abruptly hangs up the phone. 

While this is going on back at the Crown Hotel Kristen has just walked in to the penthouse.  She walks over to Tansin and says, “I need to speak to you alone.”  Tansin then instructs everyone else to get out.  After they have all left Tansin says to Kristen, “So, what happened today?”  Kristen goes on to explain that the skin from her arm peeled off in Josie’s hand and she also thinks that Josie saw her for what she really is.  As Tansin and Kristen are still talking they do not realise that Malise is still in the penthouse eavesdropping until she steps out away from the wall and becomes visible to them.  Tansin says, “What are you still doing here?”  Malise simply walks over to Kristen and slaps her in the face as she says, “How could you let Josie see you for what you really are, you stupid bitch!!  I should kill you where you stand.” 

Love/Hate Heartbreak by Halestorm

With that Tansin tries to intercede getting in between Malise and Kristen and attempts to hit Malise in the face but Malise blocks it and pulls a dagger from her right boot.  She sticks the dagger in to Tansin’s ribs.  Tansin looking down at the dagger says, “You’re the one who really wants to die today aren’t you?”  Malise, “I’m sick and tired of you hiding important stuff from Aziel and me.  You think you’re second in command but you’re not, Kyah left that job to Aziel.” 

Tansin yelling at Malise saying, “IT’S NOT TRUE, THE QUEEN DID LEAVE ME AS SECOND IN COMMAND!”  Malise simply looks at Tansin and Kristen and rolls her eyes,  “You’re just so full of shit!!  Don’t tell me you don’t get off on having so much power when Kyah and Aziel are not around?”  Tansin stands there staring at Malise with her mouth wide open because she just cannot believe how game Malise is being because normally she would kill any person who spoke back to her like that.  To do this to Malise though would raise too many questions.  Malise finally just decides to leave and goes to keep an eye on the Graveyard Nightclub herself.

By now Josie is already pretty shit-faced due to the alcohol she has consumed at home.  Whilst being inebriated Josie decides that she has had her hair the same colour as her mother’s hair for long enough and attempts to re-colour it.  Forgetting to bleach out the red she simply adds the yellow blond and then goes back into the lounge room, she sits down and continues to drink.  What Josie does not know is she is not alone in her apartment. 

After sitting on the couch for twenty minutes Josie stands up and staggers into the bathroom.  She kneels down next to the bath and begins to rinse out her hair.  Because she is so drunk she almost falls head first into the bath several times.  The last time she falls forward she is too slow to put her hand out to steady herself and she begins to tumble into the bath.  For some reason she suddenly stops and is pulled back onto her butt.  She looks around to see who is there and who pulled her back, but there is no-one else in the room.  After a few seconds she gets to her feet and goes to the mirror to see what the new hair colour looks like.  When she looks in the mirror she sees that it is still the bright red.  Josie then realises that she has forgotten to use the bleach.  She picks up the glass of alcohol and takes a drink from it and as she is drinking she thinks to herself, “How can I be so damn stupid to forget to use the bleach?”  With that she turns and throws the glass of alcohol at the wall.

After the glass hits the wall she sees a distortion in the wall but she just thinks that she is seeing things because of all the alcohol she has consumed.  She slowly staggers back into her bedroom.  She lays down on her bed and passes out. 

The moment she is unconscious the distortion she had seen on the wall moves away from the wall and crosses the bathroom into the bedroom next to her.  The person puts their hand on their arm and switches the cloaking device off and as they do so they become visible.  Standing next the Josie whilst she is asleep is one of the Nizarites ie: assassins.  She slowly wraps her fingers around the hilt of the dagger which is strapped just in front of the handgun she also carries on her right hip.  She slowly begins to draw the dagger out, brings it up above her head and with one swift movement she plunges it down towards Josie.  There is a crack and crunch noise as it connects.  She lifts it up and places her hand with the dagger in it next to her right hip.  She then proceeds to lean over Josie and takes hold of the bed covers and slowly pulls them up over Josie. 

As she turns around and begins to leave the room she brings the dagger up in front of her and with her left hand she pulls a very large huntsman spider from the tip of her dagger.  She turns and looks back at Josie as Josie rolls over in the bed still sound asleep. 

As the Nizarite gets closer to the front door she drops the now very dead spider in the rubbish bin.  She slides her knife back into the sheath and re-activates the cloaking devise and then she leaves Josie’s apartment and the building. 

The following morning Cinaed enquires about where Seneca has been.  She simply replies, “I had something important to do last night.” 

While they are discussing this Josie is just getting out of bed.  After she has gotten dressed she goes into the bathroom to brush her teeth and do her make-up.  She is applying her make-up but has not realised yet that her hair colour has changed from a bright cherry red to a bright ginger orange.  She looks up at the mirror, sees the colour change and gasps with surprise.  At first Josie does not like how her hair has turned out.  She goes back into her bedroom and rummages through her wardrobe and eventually finds a hat that she can use to cover her hair with.  After doing this she heads off to class. 

Whilst sitting in class waiting for Professor Harris to finally show up Harriet and Elizabeth walk into the room.  As they walk past Josie one of them swipes her on the back of the head dislodging the hat which falls to the floor.  This causes Josie’s hair to fall down and unwind.  As Josie leans down to pick up her hat Caroline has already done so and as she hands the hat back to Josie she turns and looks at Harriet and Elizabeth and tells them both to stop being bitches and get a life.  Their reply is, “Whatever!!”

As the day goes on Josie and Caroline get to know each other better and by the end of the day Josie has asked Caroline if she would like to come to The Graveyard Nightclub with her that night.  Caroline replies, “Yeah, that would be great, thanks.” 

After class Josie goes home, puts on her white jumpsuit which is covered in black zippers and then she twirls her hair into four ‘heidi’ buns on top of her head. 

While Keira is at the nightclub getting everything prepared  she is told by one of the bar staff that some of the patrons heard weird creaking sounds outside the nightclub and especially in the laneways.  Keira decides to go on to the roof of the nightclub to see if there are any clues to confirm her suspicions that there may be creakers in the area.  Whilst on the roof she is using a pair of thermal goggles which will help show up the creakers as they are as cold as ice. 

After about 25 minutes Keira decides to go back in to the nightclub but before she can turn around she hears a sound that chills her to the bone.  She drops the goggles, spins around and pulls out from under her jacket both of her .44 Desert Eagle pistols.  She points both weapons towards where she heard the sound and says loudly, “BRING IT…!!”  She is shocked to find that it is Cassidy who has just stepped out from where the stairwell is.  Keira pulls her weapons down quickly and says, “Oh shit, I could have shot you!!”  Cassidy simply enquires why Keira is so jumpy and Keira replies, “I’m positive I heard a creaker here on the roof.”

They quickly move back to back in order to protect themselves.  As Cassidy moves she realises that it is her new shoes that is making the sound.  Both she and Keira laugh out loud.  Keira, “You scared the total shit out of me!!”  They then go back down into the nightclub together.  As the door closes behind them a creaker steps out of the shadows.

While Keira returns to her duties Cassidy goes in to her office.  She sits down at her desk and contacts New Atlantis asking them to patch the nightclub in to the speaker system of the city so they can allow everyone, including Drake, to hear the song they are going to perform for Josie.

Back at Josie’s apartment Caroline has finally arrived.  While Josie is still doing her make-up Caroline is sitting in one of the armchairs and she sees Josie’s Apple Mac Pro sitting on the coffee table and on the screen it shows that it has Garage Band open showing a list of songs that has already been recorded.  She leans forward and selects one of the songs, When It Rains, to play.   After a few seconds the song begins to play and Caroline is amazed when she hears that it is Josie’s voice. 

When It Rains by Paramore

Josie comes out of the bathroom and walks to her bedroom door and asks Caroline what she is doing.  Caroline sits back and says, Sorry, I was just looking at the music list.  I didn’t mean to touch anything”.  Josie says, “Oh, don’t worry, it’s just music that my friends and I have done.”  Caroline goes on to say how well Josie sings and that her friends really know how to rock out a tune.  “Is this something that you and your friends just do for fun or are you in a band?”  Josie replies, “We are in a band but it has been so long since we have actually performed together in person”.  Shortly after this conversation the taxi arrives and they both hop in to it and head off to the nightclub. 

Meanwhile, from a high vantage point, Cinaed is waiting in position for her target to appear, she spots, through the scope of the 416 Barrett, several immortals entering the nightclub who she knows serve Tansin.  She contacts Seneca and explains the situation.  Seneca asks, “Why didn’t you take them out?  You know we have a standing kill order for anyone who serves Tansin or Kyah.”  Cinaed goes on to explain that there were too many civilians around.  Seneca tells her that she is on the way and to hold her position. 

Seneca goes to the rooftop of the Hyatt Hotel and she stands on the edge and leans down and pushes off taking to the air making it to the other side of the road and landing on the top of the next building with ease.  She does this all the way until she reaches Swanston Street.  She decides it would be better to activate the cloaking device so no-one can see her.  She waits for the perfect opportunity to go.  She leaps off that building, flies through the air and comes down on to the top of a tram that has stopped, crushing part of the roof.  This startles the passengers as they look up and see the damage to the roof.  She than lands safely again on the roof of the other buildings on her way to the nightclub.  She finally reaches Cinaed’s position.  Seneca asks Cinaed to replay what the scope has recorded.  After Seneca sees who is on the screen she realises that Tansin herself is somewhere close by. 

Seneca tells Cinaed that she is going to take a closer look which means she will have to enter the nightclub.  Cinaed asks, “But won’t they recognise you?”  Seneca replies, “If anyone does I will change my appearance by using the mimic device.”  With that she walks to the edge of the building and jumps off, landing in part of the darkened laneway.  By the time she walks out of the shadows she is wearing a beautiful purple, halter neck cocktail dress which exposes most of her back and is split up both sides almost all the way to her hips.  

After standing in line for a few minutes Seneca finally enters the nightclub and proceeds to the third floor.  When she arrives at the third floor there is a long line of people waiting to enter, so she stands and patiently waits her turn.  Whilst waiting she admires the gowns that the other young women are wearing.  When she finally gets in the door she goes to the bar and orders a blood martini.  While Seneca sits at the bar drinking her martini she sees Cassidy approach the bartender and she asks him if Josie has arrived at the club yet.  Before the barman replies Seneca answers the question for Cassidy saying that she has not seen Josie anywhere since she arrived. 

Cassidy looks at her and asks, “Who are you, I haven’t seen you here before.  How do you know Josie?”  Seneca replies, “I know Josie through her mother Arlia.  We were once best friends.  Forgive me for not introducing myself first, my name is Seneca.”   Cassidy sits down next to her and they begin to talk. 

Meanwhile, Josie and Caroline, who are still in the taxi, are being diverted because of a serious car accident.  The taxi then drops them off at the opposite end of the street.  The taxi driver apologises for not being able to drop them at the nightclub door and the girls tell him that’s okay and they will just walk down to the club.

As Josie and Caroline are walking down Little Collins Street they have no idea that there is an assassin waiting on one of the rooftops to kill Josie.  Cinaed is alerted to Josie’s presence when one of the little spy camera’s she has set up in the laneway spots her.  Realising she cannot get a clean shot from her position she quickly moves to position two.  She lays down and positions her weapon to get a clean lock on her target. 

Josie and Caroline walk into a well lit area which gives Cinaed the perfect shot.  Before taking the shot she relays the information to Seneca who is still sitting at the bar talking to Cassidy.  Seneca excuses herself and heads to the toilets so that her conversation with Cinaed will not be overheard.  As she enters the toilet area she asks if Cinaed is absolutely sure that this is Josie and not the wrong target.  Cinaed tells her that the facial recognition software has matched this person 100% to the photo they have of Josie. 

Cinaed is just about to take the shot, she is squeezing back on the trigger when Seneca suddenly tells her to stop.  She says they have just received new instructions which turn Josie from being a target for assassination to someone who is to be protected at all costs.  As Cinaed is being told this she spots, coming out of the darkness behind Josie and her friend, two creakers and immediately takes two shots, which go unheard because of the suppressor she has on her weapon.  The shots have hit both creakers in their chests and they fall down to the pavement and then they begin to get back to their feet, making weird noises since they both now have massive holes in their chests.  Before she can take any more shots Cinaed realises that there is a creaker on the roof right behind her. 

As she swings around to take a shot at this creaker, in a panic she buckles the bolt as she is attempting to push it back in.  She has never faced these creatures outside of training.  Realising that she can no longer fire the weapon she picks it up by the barrel and swings it as hard as she can at the creaker like a baseball bat.  The creaker catches it as if it is nothing and taking hold of both ends of the weapon it bends the gun turning it into scrap metal. 

After doing this the creaker, opens its mouth and makes a loud horrible groaning noise as it attacks Cinaed.  Thinking quickly she grabs the 50 calibre raising it up she shoves the barrel into the creakers mouth and as she pulls the trigger she screams, “EAT THIS!!”. 

Another One Bites The Dust by Queen

All that is left of the creaker standing there is its body from the waist down. 

Cinaed simply watches the lower half of the creaker move around in confusion.  It stumbles to and fro and eventually collides with the raised edge of the building.  The jolt knocks the creaker off it’s feet and upends it and it falls over the edge of the building and lands upside down on the pavement below coming to rest on what was once it’s waist.  Cinaed looks over the edge to where the creaker has landed and says, “That will teach you to fuck with me!”  Having been distracted she suddenly realises that the first two creakers she had put rounds through are still on the move.  She stands up and starts to run, dives through the air pulling herself into a ball and somersaults twice and lands on the building on the other side of McKillop Street.  She runs along the edge of the building and as she does so she begins to draw out the large sword and also the medium sword which is on her back. 

She spins them both around in her hands so that the blades are facing backwards and when she comes to the end edge of the building she leaps off  and as she lands she uses both of the blades to cut the creakers in half.  As she stands up two more creakers appear so she swings around and drives both swords into their chests but not realising that there is a human with them who serves Tansin.  The human strikes her with a solid handled spiked mace and this knocks her forward and as she does so she slices one of the other creakers partly in half.

The human steps forward and begins to pound on her but luckily she is protected by the sapphire and carbon fibre body armour and the bio-mesh.  She starts using her swords to drive both the human and the creakers back.  Taking a swing at the creaker which she has already cut partly in half she quite literally cuts its legs out from under it.  Cinaed pins the other human bitch to the wall by bringing her leg up against her throat and while she is doing this the creakers once again attack her.  She drives her blades, one up and one down on each side into the creakers heads giving each of the creakers an eye-popping lobotomy.  She then drops her leg takes the swords and cuts the bitches head off.  The human’s hands come up feeling for it’s head as it moves around like a chicken with it’s head cut off.  Eventually it drops to its knees and falls forward onto the ground.

Cinaed quickly transforms her body armour into a beautiful black strapless evening dress and heads into the nightclub to alert Seneca to what has happened.

By the time she makes it to the third floor Josie and Caroline are already sitting at a table as far away from Cassidy and the others as possible.  As Cinaed walks up to speak to Seneca she watches Cassidy walk across the dance floor to where Josie is sitting.  Cinaed starts telling Seneca what has happened.  Seneca puts up her hand, telling Cinaed to be quiet for a minute, she then turns her head so that she can eavesdrop on Cassidy and Josie’s conversation. 

Seneca listens as Cassidy says to Josie, “Thanks for showing up, I didn’t think you were going to.”  Cassidy asks “Who’s the person with you?”  Josie answers, “She’s a classmate and a friend from school.  I invited her because I didn’t want to come on my own.  Now what did you want to talk about?  Please don’t ask me again if I’m alright!”  Cassidy asks, “Can we talk privately?”  Caroline says, “Don’t worry, I’ll just go and get a drink from the bar while you two talk this out.” 

After Caroline has left the table Cassidy says directly to Josie, “I know you are in a lot of pain and you feel like everyone has abandoned you, but that is not true.  I know how you feel.”  Josie nastily says, “How the fuck would you know how I feel?  It’s not like you had your mother murdered right in front of you or your father ignore you!”  Josie goes to say that she’s dying but stops herself. 

Cassidy becomes upset from what Josie has said but before she can say anything back to her Dara, who has also been listening, walks over and not caring what Cassidy will think or what Josie’s reaction will be simply tells Josie that Cassidy watched both of her parents being murdered in front of her so she does know how she feels.  “If you had an ounce of compassion you wouldn’t be such a bitch to one of the only friends you’ve got here in Melbourne.” 

Josie gets a shocked look on her face but before she gets a remote chance to apologise Cassidy simply turns her back on her and walks away.  Dara says, “Now look what you’ve gone and done.  She was having a really good day before you came.”  Dara then turns and follows Cassidy into the office.

Seneca now listens to what Cinaed has to say.  Cinaed explains that not only did she encounter several creakers but she also witnessed several of Tansins people entering the nightclub.  Seneca says, “Then we will have to prepare for trouble.  We must not allow them to harm Josie in any way.” 

In the nightclub office Dara says, “How can Josie be so mean, we really should just kick her out for that.”  As Cassidy is getting her acolyte uniform she simply reminds him of what Natalia had said earlier.  Dara replies, “I know you’re right.”  As he goes to leave he enquires why Cassidy is putting on her acolyte uniform.  Cassidy says, “I just can’t shake a feeling that there is going to be trouble tonight.  I’ll see you on stage in a few minutes.” 

As Cassidy leaves her office the bio-mesh cloak retakes the form of the clothing she was just wearing.  As she walks over to take the stage Keira hands her the microphone.  A few seconds later she says to the crowd, “How are you all doing tonight, I’m glad you could show up, we really appreciate it?  We’ve  got a new song that we’d like to perform for you.  We wrote it especially for a really good friend of ours who seems to be going through a rough patch at the moment.  This song goes out to you Josie.” 

Josie, who is drinking, almost chokes on her drink and says, “What.....what did she say?”  Caroline says, “They’ve written a song and it’s so cool that the Spell Weavers have actually written a song just for you.”

Moments after that Cassidy and the guys begin to rock out the song that they have titled ‘Josie’. 

Josey by Hey Monday

While everyone is having fun they do not have a clue that Tansin has arrived and is overlooking the nightclub with Malise.  Malise tells Tansin that she has sent several of their spies in to the Graveyard Nightclub.  Inside the Spell Weavers are about three quarters of the way through their new song.  Cassidy looks over at Josie and she can see that, even though Josie has a smile on her face, it is obvious that it is starting to upset her and it is making her feel ashamed of the way she has been acting. 

Seneca, seeing this, starts to walk over to where Josie is sitting but she is stopped by Cinaed, who says, “You cannot interfere!”  As Seneca turns and looks back at Josie there are now four people standing around Josie’s table.  Josie is trying to get to her feet but those who are standing there will not let her up.  One of the two males looks down at Josie and says, “Hm-m-m-m I haven’t seen you here before, I’d love to take you out for a bite to eat!”  Caroline intervenes and says, “Why don’t you just go and piss off out of here?”  The man reaches into his jacket and starts to pull out a handgun.  The other guy with him says, “Are you bloody insane, we can’t afford to cause a commotion in here,  just hurry up and get the blood sample.”  The man lets go of the gun and pulls out a syringe in order to take a blood sample from Josie whom he and the others believe is an immortal.

Caroline yells, “LOOK OUT JOSIE!”  Pushing Josie’s arm out of the way and it is Caroline who is jabbed in the arm by the syringe. Josie’s reaction is to grab the bottle of beer from the table and smashes it across the head of the man with the syringe.  He staggers backwards and this gives Josie enough time to grab Caroline, pulling her up from behind the table.  They then try to make a run for it. Getting only as far as the bar because the two men stop them.  They do not realise that Cinaed has recognised the men and the two women who are with them as the ones who serve Tansin.  She immediately tells Seneca what she has seen.

By this time the Spell Weavers have finished the song and as Cassidy is the first one to step down from the stage she approaches Josie and the people she has never seen in the club before.  She can hear Josie saying, “GET OUT OF OUR WAY!!”  With that Cassidy waves her arm across in front of her which causes the two guys to be pinned against the bar and the two young women to be pushed three feet in the opposite direction. 

Josie, still holding on to Caroline’s arm, doesn’t even hesitate and runs as fast as she can to the third floor exit, downstairs and out of the nightclub.  As the four who serve Tansin attempt to follow them they are stopped by Seneca who politely ask them, “What the hell do you think you’re doing in the Graveyard Nightclub?”  One of the females answers, sarcastically, “We’re just here to have fun!”  “Yeah, right you shit-stirring bitch.  Do you really think I have no idea who the fuck you are?  You serve that monster Tansin!” 

By this time Cassidy is close enough to hear the conversation.  She reaches out to grab one of the females but she turns around and Cassidy sees that she is holding a double-edged serrated dagger. Before she can strike at Cassidy, Cassidy grabs hold of her arm.  As she is holding her arm a mist can be seen forming around her hand and everyone watches as Cassidy turns her into a block of ice. 

While this is going on inside the nightclub, Josie is now standing in Little Collins Street hailing a taxi.  As the taxi pulls up she is carefully, and as gently as possible, pulling the needle out of Caroline’s arm.  After Josie does this she rips a piece from her clothing and wraps it around the wound on Caroline’s arm to stop it bleeding.  Josie then tells the taxi driver to take Caroline home and gives him her address.  As Josie closes the taxi’s door Caroline asks, “Aren’t you coming with me?”  Josie replies, “No, I’m going to make my own way home on foot.  I’ll see you in class on Monday.”  With that Josie begins to walk briskly up McKillop Street.  As she does this she does not realise that she is now being followed by Tansin and Malise across the rooftops. 

As Seneca is still dealing with the smart-assed bitch she instructs Cinaed to go after Josie and to make sure she is safe.  Cinaed goes up the stairs to the roof, quickly grabbing the 50 calibre she looks around to see if she can spot Josie but cannot see her.  Instead she spots Malise and decides to follow her in case she is tracking Josie. 

At this very moment inside the club Gitan, Newar, Dara and Jake Gameliel have all walked up to where Cassidy and Seneca are standing.  They spread out and form a semi-circle to prevent the four from leaving.  Seneca asks them what they are really doing there.  She gets the same smart-assed reaction, “Oh, we’re just here to have fun!!”  Cassidy, getting annoyed with this, simply reaches her hand out and places it around the hand of the girl who is holding the dagger.   She tightens her grip, crushing the other girls hand and taking the dagger from her at the same time.  As Cassidy is crushing the girl’s hand everyone can see the terrified and painful look on her face as she moans and groans in agonising pain.  This causes one of the guys who is pinned against the bar to speak up and he tells Cassidy and Seneca and the guys exactly what they are doing there.  He goes into great detail about how they were ordered to retrieve blood samples from the oldest of the immortals that visit the nightclub.

On hearing this Seneca goes to leave knowing that Josie will be at risk.  As she goes to do so the smart-assed bitch reaches across and grabs her by her hair which is in a pony-tail to the side of her head.  She pulls back as hard as she can and then the smart-assed bitch produces a war-axe and begins to swing it at Seneca’s neck.  Newar, realising what is about to happen, brings his hand up and reveals the gauntlet with it’s blades out and quickly moving he blocks the war-axe with his other arm.  He raises his hand above his head and as he does so his arm begins to transform into that of a lichen and the gauntlet which is made from bio-mesh along with the blades takes the form of his hand. 

Just before he fully transforms he brings his hand down slicing through the bitches chest and he says sarcastically, “Do you mind if I cut in?” 

Her eyes go bright yellow, indicating that she is a lichen.  The males who are still pinned against the bar watch as their comrade is forced to her knees and dies in agony.  With that Cassidy says, “We still have a problem here, what to do with you two!”  One of them speaks up and says, “Don’t you mean we three?”  As Cassidy walks towards them she raises her hand and slices through the young girl who is still frozen.  She shatters into thousands of pieces.  Looking at the two men saying, “No, I meant you two!” and says, “Your kind have always been unwelcome here.”  The first of the two male vampires says very facetiously, “Go ahead and kill us but by now it is already too late for the young lady who left earlier, Tansin has probably already taken the blood sample she needed and then sucked her dry.”

As Seneca hears this she reaches down to her left side with an open hand and takes hold of her sword.  As she begins to draw it out her beautiful evening gown rapidly reverts back into her assassins uniform.  Cassidy and the others can’t believe that standing in front of them is a Nizarite who has her sword drawn all the way out,  “Now you have really forced me to cut and run.”  With one swift stroke of the blade she severs the first vampires head from his shoulders and watches as he turns to ash.  Without changing her trajectory she passes the blade through three candles which are sitting in a candelabra situated between the vampire she has just killed and the second one who is about to lose his head also.  After doing this she suddenly vanishes from everyone’s sight.  They all look around but it is Jake Gameliel who says, “Where the hell did she go?” 

Eternal by Brunuhville

As Cassidy looks back to the others with a startled look on her face indicating she does not know what to do about Josie’s situation.  The guys simply say to her., “Go, we’ll take care of this mess and follow you shortly.”  Cassidy reaches up, grabs the hood of the cloak that is still in the shape of her normal clothing.  As she begins to pull it up she reveals that she is in her full acolyte uniform and she quickly transforms into her ghost form and passes rapidly through the wall leaving only a puff of smoke in her wake. 

Back in the streets of Melbourne Cinaed has almost caught up to Malise and Tansin.  As she looks down at the road from the building tops she spots Josie going down one of the laneways but she is not the only one who has seen this.  Sitting in his car is David and his two henchmen who have also seen her.  They decide to get pay-back since no-one is around to help her.  They blast through the red light and fly up the laneway after Josie.  Josie can hear the car roaring up behind her and manages to jump out of the way just in time.  As the car goes past she realises who is driving, “Oh, shit, not now!”  She quickly ducks down another alley that is too small for them to follow her in the car, even though they try to, causing David to smash his car. 

David and his mates climb out of the car and clamber over the roof and bonnet to enter this small laneway.  As they do so they see Josie go around the corner into another part of the laneway.  By the time David and his friends get to this spot Josie has already found a way into an old building that is under restoration and renovation. 

As David and his mates get to the spot where Josie forced her way into the building they split up and each searches a different area.  One of the men enters the old building that Josie is in and as he looks around Josie is crouched down behind scaffolding that is covered by a ground-sheet which is hung over it.  The man walks right up to where the scaffolding is, Josie sees this and fearing she will be discovered she covers her mouth with both of her hands in order to muffle the fearful sounds she has just made.  After what seems to be an eternity she hears him leave.  As Josie stands up and turns around, standing right in front of her is David.  He makes a grab for her but misses.  She tries to go back out the door she came in but one of David’s mates is standing in the way.

As they chase her through the ground floor of the building she makes her way to what looks like a back door to another lane but it turns out to be a very large courtyard which is filled with all the dumpsters that contain the rubbish removed during the renovation.  She sees that there is a large old broken window sitting on a pile of  bricks which have not been used as yet.  Attached to the window frame is a large shard of broken glass. 

By this time Tansin, Kristen and Malise are now overlooking the courtyard from the top of one of the other buildings.  They watch as Josie turns around and is grabbed by the other friend of Davids.  Josie pulls away and the guy lunges at her and grabs hold of her by the clothing on her shoulder.  Josie screams out, “LET ME GO!!” and kicks him as hard as she can in the groin which brings him to his knees.  Tansin remarks, “That girl’s got some spirit in her.”  One of those who serve her asks is they should intervene.  Tansin replies, “No, let’s just see how much fun this will be.” 

At that very moment Cinead takes up her firing position and as she is looking through the scope she can see Tansin and the others laughing and pointing at something.  Cinaed re-positions to get a better look and as she looks through the telescope once again she sees that there are two men holding Josie and one trying to get up off his knees.  Cinaed then witnesses the one who has gotten up off his knees punch Josie as hard as he can in the stomach.  Josie doubles over in pain.  He lifts her chin with his left hand and smashes her in the face with his other hand.  On seeing this Cinaed chambers a round into the 50 calibre and at the same time thinking, “Try that again, you bastard!” 

Cinaed also remembers the law she was taught that they can’t just go around killing humans even though they might deserve it.  So she is forced to watch as these three men beat the absolute shit out of Josie.  After about five minutes Josie gets her own back when she starts beating the shit out of David’s two mates.  Because she is slightly inebriated she is not able to hold her own against three opponents and as she is standing there she hears David say, “Hey, Bitch!” and as she turns around David strikes her in the chest with a steel bar that he has picked up out of the trash.  This causes Josie to lose her footing and she falls back against the large shard of glass she had seen earlier.  It strikes her in the back of the neck and comes out through the front.  She puts her hand up to it and begins to cough up blood.  She struggles to pull herself forward and get off the shard.  After struggling for a few seconds she suddenly stops and her body goes limp as David smirks and says, “So now do you get the fucking point?”  One of David’s friends checks her pulse and realises that Josie is dead. 

Turning around and looking at David he yells at him, “Are you bloody insane?  I know you hated this chick’s guts but this was not part of the plan!  We were only going to beat her up to teach her a lesson, not fuckin’ kill her!”  David replies, “Well, she’s really learnt the lesson hasn’t she??”  David’s two mates say at the same time, “We’re out of here, you can deal with the shit that comes with doing this.”  David turns and says, “If you leave I’m not the only one whose going down for this, you two are in this shit up to your necks.  So don’t lecture me!” 

Around about this time in New Atlantis there is a sudden and dangerous spike in the dark matter reactor that powers the city.  At the same time they also notice that there is a problem with the maturation tank’s power output as well.  What they do not know is that it is not the maturation tank drawing the power from the dark matter reactor but Drake himself, as Josie has suddenly appeared in his mind.  Before he can ask what she is doing there it is as if she is being pulled back, so he grabs hold of her arm which draws Drake into a place he has never seen.  This is a place that has been created by the soul-stone that is on the necklace that Josie wears which has been activated by a single drop of Josie’s blood striking it.

Drake suddenly realises where they are when a massive stone door appears that has Celtic carvings on it.  As he fights to keep hold of Josie’s hand she is suddenly pulled away from him by an unseen force and dragged through the stone doorway. As he goes to follow Josie he is stopped by a barrier that has been created to stop the living from crossing over to the land of the dead.  Drake now finds himself looking through the window at the back of Josie’s house but he still cannot pass.

Inside Josie’s bedroom Josie is sound asleep in her bed but is suddenly woken by an uneasy feeling of no longer being alone.  As she sits up and looks around she realises that she is safe and in her own bedroom and thinks to herself that what she has been going through for the last several years was nothing more than a horrifying nightmare.  She proceeds to jump out of bed and head downstairs whilst calling for her mother.  At first there is absolutely no response so she starts going from room to room, still calling out.  She even opens the back door and looks outside.  To Drake’s amazement he realises that Josephine is unable to see him.  As she closes the door and turns around and begins to walk back through the kitchen to the lounge-room she hears her mother playing the piano and she rushes to the lounge room, “Mum, is that you?” 

Her mother stops playing the piano and simply asks Josie, “What are you doing home so early?  You shouldn’t be here.”  Josie goes on to explain the horrible nightmare she’s had, where her mother had died and she had been left all alone.   As she is doing this the wound appears on Josie’s neck and she begins to bleed.  She starts to fall toward the floor.  Arlia rushes to Josie and catches her in her arms.  As Arlia comforts her daughter, Drake, still on the outside, is pounding on the door and window trying to get into the house.  Josie looks up at her mother as she asks, “Am I dying?” 

Arlia looks down at Josie with the saddest look on her face and answers, “Yes!”  Arlia looks up and says, “Oh God, please don’t let her die.”  Suddenly, with that, standing in front of both of them is the unadulterated and unrestrained vampire form of Josie that is not controlled by human emotion.  

Back in the courtyard David and his somewhat remorseful friends who are arguing with each other do not realise or have a clue what is going on behind them.  The hair ties which had held Josie’s heidi buns in place have begun to snap and with that her hair begins to blow out around her face as if there is a strong gale. 

David and his mates start to realise that there is something seriously wrong when they hear the 'squeaky clean sound of a plate' being made as Josie’s vampire side begins to pull itself off the shard of glass.  As David and his mates turn around, they witness what they still think is Josie raise her head slightly and suddenly open her purple eyes.  David and his mates, terrified at what they are seeing all exclaim, “HOLY SHIT!!”  As they flee for their lives they are suddenly stopped by Josie’s vampire self,   but no matter where they turn to run they can’t seem to get past her, it is like she can be in more than one place at the same time. 

As this is happening those who are on the rooftops looking down, including Tansin, and Cinaed who is somewhat further away, are absolutely terrified by the amount of power that they can sense coming from Josie’s vampire self. 

David and his mates see that the doorway to the old building seems to be clear, but as they approach vampire Josie suddenly appears.  As she steps back into the shadows of the old building she whispers, “This is the only way out - through me!”  She drags her nails across the glass in the door which is open and this makes the sound of nails scratching down a chalkboard. 

David and his mates follow carefully behind thinking that if Josie can’t see them in the dark then they may have a chance to make a run for freedom. 

Meanwhile back in the world that has been created by the soul-stone, Drake is once again losing the one he has fallen in love with over the centuries.  This love has formed from faint memories of the love he can remember that she felt for him.  As he is standing at the window looking in at Josie and Arlia he begins to manifest the powers of the kymera.  Arlia, sensing this, looks towards the window and all she can see is the figure of a man with lightning zig-zagging around his body as though he is in the middle of a lightning storm. 

Back in the maturation tank the same thing has begun as Drake draws more and more on the energy from the dark matter reactor to such a point he begins to overload the systems of New Atlantis causing them to short out.  Due to the equipment all over New Atlantis shorting out it forces them to physically shut down the dark matter reactor and switch to back-up generators.  After doing this the power levels in the maturation tank area are finally beginning to go back to normal. 

Back in the dark old building that is being renovated Josie is seeing David and his two friends as plainly as if it was daytime.  She is moving around them and flicks one of the men in the ear then she trips one of them up and they hear her whisper, “I can see you-oo-oo-oo!”  Suddenly she appears behind David and whispers in his ear, “I’m behind you-oo-oo-oo!”  This causes David to spin around so fast his head nearly comes off his shoulders.  While Josie is intently enjoying terrifying the shit out of David, his two friends make a dash for the front door but they do not get far as Josie appears in front of them and starts slashing at them with her long nailed hands.  She occasionally uses her fists and elbows to strike them.  She keeps pushing them back towards the back door.  David just stands there watching his friends being sliced up and instead of helping he decides that while Josie is pre-occupied it should be easy for him to escape by just walking out the front door.

The Sealed Kingdom (Dark Music) by Adrian Von Ziegler

He gets no more than five feet when Josie suddenly appears in front of him.  David being the loud-mouth thug he is decides to antagonise her.  As this is going on both Cassidy and Seneca arrive and ask Cinaed where Josie is.  Cinaed simply points, saying, “Why didn’t you tell me that Josie was a vampire?”  Cassidy looks as Seneca who in turn looks at Cinaed and asks, “Why do you think that?”  At that very moment, as he is leaning forward towards Josie, David says something as stupid as can be, “What are you going to do to me now you little bitch?”  As he says this Josie, listening intently, tilts her head slightly to one side.  Suddenly, with a burst of speed, Josie slams her vampire fangs into David’s neck making a loud cracking crunch sound as they enter his flesh.  She then proceeds to swing his whole body backwards and forwards like a dog does with it’s chew toy.  Everyone who is watching from the rooftops are all thinking along the same lines, “Oh damn, that’s gotta hurt!!”  This becomes even more painful as David’s mates grab him by the legs and try and pull him away from Josie, but this just intensifies the shaking.

Josie’s teeth slide out of David’s neck but she pushes down again and leaves large tear marks from her fangs.  After she does this, she swallows the last mouthful of blood, gives a deep sigh and her eyes begin to glow even more brightly purple as the wound that was inflicted on her earlier begins to heal. 

At the same time in the world that was created by the soul-stone Arlia watches while the wound on the human half of Josie heals.  A few seconds later the vampire half of Josie re-appears and  kneeling down next to Arlia it leans back into her arms and both it and the human half of Josie once again become whole.  As Arlia reaches up and takes hold of the amulet around Josie’s neck, the real Josie is just slamming her fist into the guys stomach who did the same to her earlier.  She does this with enough strength to push him through the wall and make him skid across the ground on his face.  Cassidy Nevel comments, “That must really hurt especially when you’re using your face as a brake!” 

Arlia is now ripping the amulet off Josie’s neck and as she does this the amulet’s chain around Josie’s neck in the real world suddenly snaps and falls towards the floor, it bounces once and then falls through a crack in the boards.  This causes Josie great pain in her head, she staggers for a few moments before David punches her to the ground then he and his friends proceed to stomp on Josie.  As Josie looks up and begs them to stop David brings his foot down on Josie’s head so hard you can hear bone crack.  While this continues Tansin instructs Malise to retrieve the blood sample from Josie believing that she is a very old and powerful immortal.

Malise looks at Tansin and says, “You’ve got to be bloody kidding, right!!?  What happens if she suddenly wakes up?  I’m not strong enough to go up against an immortal like that, I don’t think you would be able to withstand her strength either.”  Tansin says, “This is not a request, this is an order.”  Malise instructs those who are under her command to go first.  Then as Malise takes a step off the building she says, “You really are trying to kill me aren’t you?”   Tansin and Kristen look at each other with a look of “we don’t know what you’re talking about!” 

David has picked up another steel bar and he begins to swing it at Josie’s head but he stops when he hears several loud growls coming from the courtyard.  As he and his mates look up he sees several people standing there with what appears to be large dogs next to them.  For this reason they decide to run before the cops can be called. 

Due to the amulet having been removed from Josie’s neck Drake now finds himself back in his own mind and still inside the maturation tank.  He believes Josie is safe and begins to power down and relax. 

Back in Melbourne, at the old building, Malise sends two of her lichens into the old building first and as they do so they go from being four legged to two legged.  Malise walks over to Josie and using her foot she rolls Josie over causing her more pain to the point where she groans in agony even though she is unconscious.  Malise then takes from one of her vampires, who has accompanied her, a syringe which she uses to take the blood sample from Josie.  Attached to the syringe is a light which glows green to show that the blood is from an immortal.  After she has done this she telepathically communicates with Tansin through the amulet that she wears and asks, “What should we do with her now?”  Tansin simply instructs Malise to kill her.  Malise asks, “Are you sure, we could gain a lot of benefit from dissecting her?”  Tansin says, “No, that is too dangerous, do as I said, kill her!” 

Malise turns to the two lichens and tells them to rip this girl apart.  As one of the other vampires is asking the question about how to get rid of the remains and leave no evidence, the lichens are getting closer to Josie.  Malise then tells the vampire that is with her, “When the lichens have had their pleasure of ripping this girl apart the creakers can then devour the remains until there is nothing left.” 

Cassidy and Cinaed hear a loud gasp and the word, “NO!” coming from Seneca.  Cinaed asks, “What’s wrong?”  She answers, “They’re about to rip Josie apart and then feed her remains to the creakers!”   This alarms both Cassidy and Cinaed.  As Cassidy looks back down to where Josie is she replies, “Not if I have anything to do with it.”  At the moment she finishes saying this she turns into water and pours herself down into a drain that is right next to her.  Because Cassidy is now like water she moves through the pipes with great speed.  She emerges from a broken pipe that has led her directly into the same room that Josie and the other immortals are in. 

When she comes out of the pipe she slides across the floor as a snake would.  She ends up right between the two lichens and as she does so she takes the form of smoke filled with flames.  As she re-takes her human form she has her arms outstretched to the side bringing both of her hands in contact with both of the lichens.  Before they can react she uses the power of fire to cremate one as she uses the power of wind, making a mini-tornado which spins the lichen so fast that he bursts like a balloon full of water spraying blood everywhere.  As this happens Malise begins to take her harlequin form but before she can finish the transformation Cassidy releases a massive bolt of lightning from her hand which strikes Malise in the chest blowing her off her feet. 

As Malise comes to a crashing stop Cassidy is in the middle of ramming one of her blades into one of the vampires hearts.  She takes her other fighting dagger and throws it, spinning through the air, and it severs the second vampire’s head from her shoulders just as she makes it out into the courtyard.  Cassidy looks around to see that the other immortals are backing away and running scared shitless. 

Cassidy takes off her bio-mesh cloak and very carefully lays it over Josie’s bruised and broken body.  As she is doing this she thinks to herself, “What kind of immortal are you?  I have rarely seen a vampire of your strength, but as you lay here bruised and broken you seem to me to be only human.” 

Distracted by Josie’s pain Cassidy does not realise that she is now vulnerable without the bio-mesh cloak on.  As she stands up and looks over at Malise she sees a sinister smile come across her face and right there and then a harlequin violently stabs Cassidy in the back and as she feels the blade pass through the muscles and rib cage she is just able to ghost out her heart as the spear comes out the front of her chest.  Although she has survived being killed by the gold tip of the spear the iron part begins to take it’s toll as particles of iron move through her blood stream and begin to age her into being an old woman. 

Cassidy is doubled over holding the spear that has come out the front of her chest and while she is doing this she can hear Malise walking towards her, laughing.  Malise bends down, picks up the syringe and as she tries to jab Josie to get her blood Cassidy screams, “LEAVE HER ALONE YOU BITCH!!”  at the same time she attempts to form more lightning in her hand but due to the iron being in her blood it just fizzles out. 

Malise, on seeing this, says to the harlequin, “Make her suffer!”  The harlequin then pulls the spear backwards and twists it causing the blades of the spear to tear up more flesh inside and outside of Cassidy’s chest.  Cassidy screams in agony as blood pours out of her mouth. 

Cassidy tries to calm her mind to make a connection with Drake’s mind.  Due to the harlequin twisting the spear inside of her she is unable to calm her mind enough.  So once again she takes hold of the spear tip and holds it so tightly that he can’t twist it as much, this tears up her hands but gives her the few seconds she needs to enter Drake’s sub-conscious mind. 

What Drake sees is himself, along with Cassidy, standing in the Hall of Lost Souls, this is where the greatest of acolytes, hunters and humans are buried.  During their walk through the Hall of Lost Souls, before they reach the part that is built like the inside of a mausoleum, Cassidy stops and turns to Drake.  She begins to tell him how sorry she is.  Drake asks Cassidy why she is so sorry.  Cassidy goes on to tell Drake that she is about to break her word, that she can no longer stay by his side in the fight against Kyah.  She will also no longer be able to help him find out the reasons why he has lost his memory and why he cannot recall the face of his true love.  Cassidy turns her back to Drake and he cannot understand why she is standing there with her hand on one of the headstones that is attached to the wall until she begins to fade away.   When she is almost completely gone the last words she says to Drake are, “Goodbye, my old friend.” He is now able to see that the headstone has been inscribed and he reaches out to grab Cassidy so that she can’t disappear but it is too late.  Drake falls forward and steadies himself by putting his hand out onto the headstone and the one next to it.  By doing this he sees pictures in his mind, and the pictures are of both Arlia and Cassidy, one of Arlia and how she died and the other image is of Cassidy right at this very moment as her life is slowly slipping away. 

Back in New Atlantis the whole city suddenly goes dark as all the power from the generators is consumed and this causes the main dark matter reactor to come back on line.  Before it can feed the power to the city it is suddenly diverted directly to Drake in the maturation tank. 

Back in Drake’s mind, after he has seen what has happened and what is happening now he simply says, “I’m about to break my word as well, I swore I would never kill another living human or immortal but that has changed.”  At that very instant Drake opens his eyes and awakens.  A massive explosion rocks the city of New Atlantis as Drake releases a portion of the power he has drawn on from the reactor, which instantly vaporises the maturation tank he is in and leaves him standing in the middle of a meter deep crater. 

Path To Darkness (Dark Music) by Adrian Von Ziegler

Outside the Forbidden Area the heat that was generated from the explosion has heated the walls so much that it has made everything else go up in flames.  While those fight to control the fires they have no idea what lies beyond the door of the Forbidden Area but they are about to find out very shortly. 

Back inside the Forbidden Area there is a massive amount of smoke covering Drake and the meter deep crater but as he begins to move out of the smoke you can already see that he has almost become the perfect Kymera.  As he approaches the doors, standing in his way is a Golum and as he gets closer to it, it turns around exposing a seam in it’s back which opens up allowing him to step into the Golum itself.  Moments after he does this the Golum merges fully with the other parts of the immortal beings that have joined together as the Kymera.  The demon has scales, large and small, that cover it’s body and these look like the scales of a dragon.  Now he has done this he has become the full Kymera with powers unequal to any other living immortal. 

He has reached the doors but the control panel was destroyed during the explosion and after seeing this he tries to pry the doors apart and this leaves large claw marks in the doors.  The people who are outside putting out the fires can hear the groaning of the metal as he is trying to pull the doors apart.  It suddenly goes eerily silent then that silence is broken by Drake slamming his fists into the massive doors of the Forbidden Area and all those who are watching can see the doors begin to buckle as he leaves large fist marks.  He hits the doors four times, then on the fifth attempt he blows the doors out and across the hallway with such force that the doors embed themselves in the far wall. 

Drake walks out into the middle of the corridor and just before he does a long range teleportation he sees all those who are trying to put out the fires are having difficulty doing so.  He makes his eyes glow and all the flames immediately disappear as though they were never there.  Just after Drake teleports from New Atlantis, The Elder appears and says, “And so the hunt begins!” 

After the guys have cleaned up what remains of the immortals that challenged both Cassidy and Cinaed they are just about ready to leave when Newar tells the person behind the bar to change out the candles that were damaged during the fight.  The person behind the bar asks, “What damaged candles?”  Newar walks up to the candles and gently pushes each of them and one by one the top halves of the candles fall off.  The barman asks, “Why don’t we use the rest of them before we replace them?” and proceeds to light them.  As he does so the little candle flame becomes a massive flame that looks like it is coming from a blow-torch.  All the candles in the nightclub do the same thing.   

At the same time a really cold wind begins to blow and they can hear and see the crackling of electricity going from the walls to the candelabras and back, arcing fiercely.  The flames eventually die down and the wind & lightning dissipate and suddenly above them in the roof of the nightclub the teleportation gate, which looks like a massive black hole, opens up.  It’s then that they realise that something terrifying is coming. 

Right at that very moment, before them appears a creature none of them have ever seen before.  It lands in front of them, crouched down on one knee and one foot with one hand behind it’s raised leg and the other hand stretched out onto the floor to keep it’s balance.  The creature slowly raises it’s head, begins to sway it’s head from side to side as if it is searching for something.  After a few seconds pass it asks, in a growling sort of voice, the question of all those who are on the third floor of the nightclub, “Where is Nevel?  Where is Cassidy Nevel?” 

Several of the other immortals step forward and ask, “What business do you have with Cassidy Nevel?”  They get no response.  Those who have asked this question are joined by many more immortals who challenge this intruder who is, unbeknown to them, actually Drake. 

As the immortals jump on top of Drake in order to subdue him, the other guys are just standing there having no idea what to do against this creature.  Seconds later Drake has been pushed down almost to the ground, he manages to dig his claws in and get a foothold and as he stands up he opens his wings and throws all the immortals off in different directions.  One of the harlequins comes flying up behind him but before the demon can even strike, Drake wraps his tail around her neck and simply holds her up in mid-air while the others get to their feet and try to attack him again.  Before they can get three feet towards him he utters the word “Revert” and this causes all those immortals in their transformated state to return to their human forms.  Gitan says, “This is not good, this is not good at all!”  With that Drake teleports himself to Cassidy’s location. 

He appears directly above the conservatory where he can see all the cruelty and pain that is being caused to Cassidy.  He tilts himself forward, goes flying through the roof of the conservatory, shattering all the glass which falls striking many of the humans and immortals who serve Tansin.  It misses Cassidy and Josie by just millimetres. 

Malise grabs one of the others, placing them between herself and danger, meanwhile the rest cover themselves as best they can so that they don’t get as badly injured as some of the others.  They have no idea where this thing has hidden itself within the room.  Malise looks intently around the room and says, “WHO DARES TO INTERFERE WITH ME??”  She hears from the shadows a growling voice which states, “You should be less concerned with who I am and more concerned with what I am!!”

Malise, laughing loudly, suggests that this thing get a job in comedy.  Then she instructs one of the young women who are close to her to finish off Cassidy while this creature watches.  Drake says, “If you do this then we have a problem!”  Malise asks, “What do you want with Cassidy?”  Drake simply answers, “I have a bone to pick with this one since she injured me quite badly the last time we met.”  Malise replies, “I don’t give a shit what your problem is with her since she’s about to die.”  Then she re-orders the same person to kill her.  On seeing this Drake picks up several six inch steel nails.  As he calls out to the girl, “Hey, you with the spear!!”  He lets fly with the nails, striking the young human woman in the head and neck killing her instantly.  Malise says, “YOU DARE TO INTERFERE!!”  She takes one of the machine guns from the dead girls body and then begins to spray bullets everywhere, with no regard for the safety of those who are with her.  Whilst doing this she is screaming out, “WHERE ARE YOU?” 

Drake answers, “I’m over here.”  Then he continues on, “I told you we would have a problem if you did this.  I believe you can always nail down a problem and solve it!”  Malise replies angrily, “WILL SOMEONE JUST KILL THIS FUCKER!!”  With that Drake reveals himself as standing in a doorway on one of the upper levels.  Several of the immortals attack him as he steps back into the darkness and they follow him.  Clashing of claws, howling and demon fire shooting out everywhere can be seen and heard by all.  Suddenly everything becomes deathly silent as only one of the lichens who attacked steps out into the doorway.  Cassidy is the first one to notice that there is something wrong with this immortal and she tries to say this to Malise and Malise just turns and punches Cassidy hard in the face.

What Cassidy has noticed, but Malise has not, is that the lichen seems to be bleeding from the shoulders where there are strange bony hooks sticking out from its flesh.  Malise commands the werewolf to come and stand before her but as he does so they watch as this poor lichen’s flesh is peeled away from his body like a banana and he falls to the floor, letting out a loud, mournful howl which sends terrifying shivers through everyone, including Tansin, who is still watching from the rooftop.   Drake steps forward just far enough for everyone to see him as he puts the four bony tails back into one. 

Malise, after seeing this opens fire on Drake with what remains of the ammunition in the weapon she is holding.  When she runs out she orders the others to do the same, to open fire.  They are using every weapon that they carry but nothing is even making a dent.  Drake is getting thoroughly annoyed with this and he puts his hand out and creates a shock-wave of wind knocking them on their arses.  Malise gets back to her feet and is screaming at the other immortals to try again. Drake moves his head sideways, looking directly at Malise and utters the words “My turn!!” in a growling voice.  Without further hesitation he attacks.  As he moves around the room he uses all that he has at his disposal as he leaves a trail of bloody human and lichen corpses, piles of ashed vampires and melted flesh and bones of the demons. 

There is only a very few that he feeds upon the last human female that serves Malise he drops what remains of the corpse and begins to walk towards Malise.  She and one harlequin and two creakers are all that is left.  As he moves faster and faster towards Malise she commands the last two creakers, the living dead, to stop him.  They charge at him with their mouths wide open and making a disgusting groaning and moaning sound.  Before they can even touch him, he strikes both of them twice but to Malise it looks as though he has only struck them once.  Malise watches as the energy transferred to the creakers from Drake’s strikes causes them to separate into three distinct pieces.  The first lot that they see is the skin and flesh, then they see the muscle on it’s own as well and then the last piece they see of the poor creakers are the bones and organs.  To make sure that this has gotten both Malise and Tansin’s attention to what they are dealing with, Drake flash freezes the creakers solid as each piece is flying through the air. 

This terrifies and confuses Malise to the point where she does not know what to do.  The bitch decides that if she is going out this way then Cassidy can join her.  She picks up one of the swords which is laying on the ground and thrusts it towards Cassidy who is, at the moment, defenceless.  Drake, on seeing this, suddenly changes his eye colour to silver.  At the very same time Cassidy, leaning her head back and taking a deep sighing breath, opens her eyes to reveal that her eyes have also changed to this silver colour.  This is due to Drake’s blood being in her system.

Cassidy sees the blade coming down towards her.  Concentrating hard she creates an invisible barrier in front of herself which when struck by Malise’s sword prevents it from going any further.  Malise looks down at Cassidy and says, “How the hell are you able to do this, you should be dead by now you bitch!!?”  Cassidy looks at Malise and states, “I can do this thanks to a gift from an old friend.”  She then begins to regain her youthful appearance, due to the iron particles being pushed out of her bloodstream.  Malise, seeing this, continues to hammer away at Cassidy’s head with her sword.  She notices that she is getting closer and closer to Cassidy’s head and says to her, “You can’t hold out much longer!”  Just as she brings the sword back from striking again she notices that she can actually see the barrier and it is beginning to dissipate. So with all of her strength she strikes one last time, but she realises that she cannot move the sword forward any further thanks to Drake’s quick thinking. 

Drake has appeared in front of Malise and in between her and Cassidy and using the bone blades from his forearm he has caught the sword and prevented the tip of the blade from just touching Cassidy’s forehead.  Cassidy looks up, not sure whether this creature is Drake or not until she notices the claw marks down his right shoulder and upper arm which she is responsible for.  She tilts her head around Drake so that she can see Malise and gloatingly she says, “I told you that you were fucked!!”  Malise looking back at this horrifying creature suddenly realises who it is.

As Malise turns her head to scream out to Tansin, Drake suddenly grabs hold of the sword and pulling it out of Malise’s hand he throws it at the harlequin that is still holding the shaft of the spear that is through Cassidy’s chest.  He throws the sword with such force that it pins the harlequin to the wall and at the same time Drake says, “Stick around.”  Then he turns his attention back to Malise, as she screams out, “It’s DRAKE!!” 

Drake does a somersault in the air over the top of Malise and when he is vertical with her he reaches out with his hands taking hold of her head and with a single move snaps her neck like a twig.  Cassidy hears the loud snap but unfortunately this does not kill Malise because Drake is not feeling that merciful towards her.  As Malise falls to her knees, Kristen, who is standing next to Tansin, asks, “Are you really going to let Malise die?”  Tansin just shrugs her shoulders and teleports herself down into the room below and appears right next to Josie.  She pulls the cloak back from Josie, stretches her hand out so as to indicate to Drake that she will feed.  Tansin, being sarcastic, says to Drake, “How nice it is to see you once again.”  Drake turns and says, “BULLSHIT!!  Nothing nice ever happens when you’re around.”  Tansin, putting one of her hands on her chest says, “That hurts me so much!” 

Drake says, “Let’s just get down to business, why are you here and what do you want?”  Tansin replies, “We are here for your friends and we want their blood.”  Drake looks around, confused because at this time he cannot see Josie due to her brain tumour, but seeing Cassidy he asks, “You want Cassidy’s blood??  Tansin says, “Yes” and throws him the syringe then continues on by saying, “If you don’t do as I instruct I will kill the both of them.”  With that all of the immortals who serve Tansin appear.  Cassidy still in a weakened state begs Drake to take her blood for Josie’s sake.  Drake asks, “Who is this other person you two keep talking about?”  Cassidy points towards Tansin and says, “That is Josie there lying on the ground with Tansins hand around her neck.”  At the very moment Drake turns back towards Tansin the clouds part and the rays from the full moon strike Josie giving Drake the ability to see her for a few seconds.

After the clouds have re-covered the moon all he can make out of Josie is her silhouette.  Even though Drake and his friends are surrounded by many enemies he warns Tansin that if she harms this young girl he will rip her a new asshole.  Tansin replies, “How badly she gets hurt is up to you. This things life for Cassidy’s blood.”  As she says this she tightens her grip on Josie’s neck knowing that this will make Drake do exactly as he is told.  Drake turns around and kneels on one knee next to Cassidy and carefully draws her blood.  After he has done so and before he stands up he breaks both the front spear tip and the rear shaft off but leaves the piece that is embedded in Cassidy’s chest so that the bleeding will not start again. 

Drake who is now standing up asks Tansin to give her word that Josie will not be harmed.  Stupidly Tansin answers, “Trust me, I will let her go!”   Drake knows from this one word that Tansin is going to kill her for he has learnt that in this world ‘Trust me’ means ‘Fuck you’, but he knows he has no choice but to hand over the blood!!  As he does so Tansin begins to feed off Josie.  Moving quickly Drake appears in front of Tansin, he grabs her wrist pulling her hand and arm back so fast and hard he breaks her lower arm in three places.  She barely screams and uses her other arm to strike Drake across the neck and face sending him flying through the air. 

As Drake gets back to his feet he watches as Tansin pulls her arm back into place and he listens to the bones crack and crunch as they reset.  Looking at Drake Tansin says, “You can’t be too concerned about the harm that you have brought to your friend,  now watch her die!”  As she says this she stretches out her hand and retakes hold of Josie’s neck, “I’m going to enjoy hurting her just to watch you suffer.”  What Tansin does not realise is that Seneca has already got her in the cross-hairs of the scope attached to the 50 calibre.  Just as she pulls the trigger she says, “You’re never going to hurt my…….” The last word is muffled by the sound of the 50 calibre being fired. 

A few seconds later, down range Tansin starts to bitch and moan about it being extra cold all of a sudden.  She has not noticed the whopping great hole that is in her torso, which has been caused by the 50 calibre liquid filled bullet.  She turns to one of the immortals and says, “Will someone get me a jacket, it’s bloody freezing.”  As she finishes saying this she wonders why she can see someone’s forearm and hand sticking out in front of her chest with the fingers wiggling as the person says, sarcastically, “Well, there’s your problem!”  Not enjoying the sarcasm from the person behind her, as punishment, she closes the wound around the poor persons arm and sucks them dry leaving only the forearm and hand looking normal. 

Tansin says, viciously, to all the others, as she breaks off the arm and holds it up for everyone to see, “Anybody else want to give me a hand??”  She looks at Drake and says, “Shit, that hurt!”  Drake, looking back, simply replies, “Don’t tell me your bloody problems you shit-stirring bitch!”  Tansin puts her hands out in front of her and begins to close her hands and when she does this Drake can see pressure being exerted on Josie’s body.  Drake asks, “What are you up to?”  He gets no reply from Tansin, just an evil, wicked grin comes across her face. 

Dance With Dragons (Fantasy Medieval Music) by Brunuhville

Tansin places more pressure on Josie’s body which causes her to wake in screaming agony.  Drake, not able to stand seeing her in this much pain, quickly reacts by kicking a fighting staff up into the air so that he can catch hold of it.  Without hesitation he attacks Tansin which causes her to release part of her grip on Josie allowing her to pass out from the pain once again, but this is not enough for Drake to stop.  With the next swing of the fighting staff the blade catches Tansin through the arm almost severing it from the shoulder.  This makes Tansin take a few steps back.  On seeing this the other immortals that serve her attack Drake by tackling him to the ground and all piling on top of him.    They punch and kick him whilst he is on the ground.  One of them manages to drive a war axe into his shoulder-blade but this only further fuels Drake’s rage.  He stands up opening his wings and throws the immortals through the air as if they are made of tissue paper. 

Drake then turns back towards Tansin and throws the fighting staff at her but she is quick enough to catch it in mid-air showing that her shoulder is fully repaired.  She lets it slide through her hand until the bladed end touches Josie’s throat.  Tansin then demands that Drake re-take his human form.  Drake, not wanting to risk any harm to Josie or Cassidy returns to his human form.  Tansin looks at those who serve her and says, “Will somebody just kill this prick already!!”  With that she gets a response from Malise as she slowly stands back up on her feet  and at the same time trying to put her head back on her shoulders straight.  Malise has put her head back on so quickly she doesn’t realise that it’s on back to front.  To everyone this looks extremely funny.  Malise looks down and asks, "Does my ass look big in this?"  This even gets the cold-hearted bitch Tansin laughing. 

Malise just stands there with her hands out and asks, “What??”  Tansin simply points and says, “If you stay that way you really will be able to kiss your own arse.”  Malise puts her hands around her head and twists it with a very loud crunch so that it is back in the correct position.  Once she has finished doing this she pulls out from behind her back a small machine gun and suddenly opens fire on Drake.  Many rounds strike him in the stomach and chest which causes him to fall backwards on to the ground.  Malise slowly walks over and goes to shoot him in the head but out of nowhere Kristen grabs her arm and pushes it up so that she cannot shoot him.  Tansin asks, “What in the hell do you think you are doing?”  Kristen replies, “Forgive me but must I remind you that if you kill him Kyah will never forgive you?”  Tansin then tells Malise, “That is enough, we will take him with us this should please our queen.” 

As they go to leave they realise that they are surrounded when Gitan lops off the two heads of the immortals that are dragging Drake.  The other immortals attack Gitan.  They all hear loud shots ring out as Gitan asks, as he is staring up to where the stairs are, “What took you so long?”  Standing on the stairs is Jake Gamaliel, “Better late than never!”

A harlequin comes out behind Jake and just misses him as it flies over the top of him.  Jake draws out one of his swords and throws it through the air making contact with the harlequins wing, severing it, mid-flight.  As it slams into the ground and skids across to the open door it is sliced into several pieces by a set of massive claws and out of the shadows steps Newar and following closely behind is the other immortals from the Nightclub.  Newar is now in his full transformated state and they proceed to battle  against the others.

During the battle several of the humans and immortals from the nightclub surround and protect both Josie and Cassidy.  They also help Drake to his feet and ask, “Are you badly hurt?”  Drake, now being really pissed off, replies sarcastically, “No, you dipshit, this blood pouring out of me is just for special effects!!”  As he pushes all the rounds from the machine gun from his body and heals.  The next thing he knows is that Tansin is killing those who helped him to his feet. 

Tansin begins slicing the air towards Drake with her two fighting daggers.  Suddenly there is a massive flash of light which causes Tansin to look up.  All she sees is a pair of feet coming at her.  One strikes her in the chest and the other strikes her in the face slamming her into the ground.  As she tries to lean forward and get to her feet Dara looks down at her and says, “No need to get up!” and slams her head into the ground with his foot one more time.  Dara brings his wings forward quickly which propels him backwards and he lands next to Drake.

Both Malise and Kristen rush to Tansin’s side and as they are trying to drag her out of the middle of the fight  they both say, at the same time, “We’ll see you all dead for this.”  Dara simply replies to his sister and Kristen, “Never write a cheque that your arse can’t cash!”  With that he flies full force towards them but before he can reach them and rip them apart limb from limb two more harlequins appear and teleport Kristen, Tansin, Malise and some of the others to safety.  All Dara gets is a clawfull of floorboards and slate.

Drake, watching how many humans and immortals are dying on both sides can no longer stand idly by.  He draws on all the powers he’s got from all the different immortals he is made of.  He places his hand on the ground and from his hand a web of flame appears, it runs in all directions lighting the floorboards and slate on fire.  As these flames reach all those who are battling against each other Drake simply thinks to himself, “This is enough!”  He utters one word out loud, “NIGHTMARES!!”  As the flames reach and touch each of the humans and immortals inside their minds each of their nightmares comes to life.  Some fall to the ground, holding their heads and screaming while others claw at their heads trying to get to the images in their minds. 

After what seems to be an eternity of agonising pain for all those involved Drake finally allows them to stop suffering from the nightmares that have been created.  He allows all those who serve both Tansin and Kyah to leave but as he is doing so all the guys complain, “How can you let these bastards go after what they’ve done, especially when they’ve tried to kill Cassidy and Josie?”  Drake replies, “I am more concerned about getting Cassidy and this girl you call Josie back home and to New Atlantis for medical treatment.  Cassidy can’t keep her heart fazed for much longer with the piece of spear shaft stuck through her chest.” 

A medic comes up to them and reports that Josie has many broken bones and severe bruising for one who has such fair skin.  This could lead to complications such as blood clots and even severe scarring.  While Drake is trying to tell the medic to do what he can for Josie, Dara is continually asking Drake for permission to go after his sister and Tansin.  Drake turns to Dara and says, “That is not an option at the moment we have more important things to deal with in helping those who are injured, especially Cassidy.”  As he is saying this Jake Gamaleil calls out and says that the chauffeur driven car is here and it is ready to take Cassidy and Josie along with Drake back to their house. 

While Gitan and Newar are helping Cassidy carefully in to the car neither they nor the others realise that Tansin has ordered the two harlequins that saved her to return and kill as many as possible.  Drake, Gitan and Newar hear what sounds like more fighting and as they approach the door they see Dara come flying through the door.  He slams into the ground and skids to a stop in front of them.  Newar asks, “What’s going on in there?”  Dara, in pain from the claw marks in his chest, tells them that the two harlequins have returned and have begun to kill everyone in sight.  Drake instructs Gitan and Newar to help Dara and also to protect Cassidy.  He says, “I’ll take care of this!” 

As Drake walks towards the open door he reaches back and tears the war axe from his shoulder.  By the time he enters many humans and immortals have been killed.  He sees one of the harlequins, ie; demons, feeding on a very young female acolyte, he yells out to it, “HEY, YOU, UGLY!!”   The harlequin turns around to face him and as it crosses the floor towards him it simply drags the young girl behind it.  The creature says to Drake, “What do you want, you pitiful excuse for an immortal.”  It then picks the girl up in front of it and goes to take another bite, but before it can finish opening it’s big mouth it suddenly realises that it is in a lot of pain.  As it looks back at Drake it can see it’s lower jaw in his hand and Drake simply states, “You should never bite off more than you can chew!”  With that he lets fly with the war axe severing the harlequins arm just above the wrist.  Then he takes great pleasure in ripping the harlequin apart, piece by piece. 

The young girl who was injured who is now holding her throat and her shoulder tries to speak and tell Drake that Josie is in trouble but she cannot so she simply points.  Drake turns around, seeing the other harlequin bearing down on Josie, he disappears.  Suddenly the harlequin comes to a painful and dead stop but cannot understand why until it sees a large amount of blood pouring out of itself.  It sees Drake’s wings begin to appear because they are now covered in blood.  Drake goes from his ghost form to his human form but still with his harlequin wings outstretched.  The harlequin begins to claw at Drake’s wings more attempting to get to Josie.  This creature is so insane that it reaches back and rips one off both of it’s own wings and strikes at Josie with them.  Fortunately for her she still has the bio-mesh over the top of her and this absorbs the attack.  Drake says, “You fuckers will never learn, I think it’s time for you to split.” And with that he opens his wings fully splitting the harlequin in two and throwing each piece to the far corners of the room.

When each piece slams into the walls the organs spill out on to the floor.  While Drake gently picks Josie up and carefully carries her to the car he watches as the other harlequins’ hearts stop beating.  As Drake places Josie gently into the car next to Cassidy, Cassidy looks up at Drake and smiling says, “I hope the bitch now enjoys her split personality!”  Drake smiles and tells Cassidy that she can always find the humour in battle. 

Dara keeps on asking if he can go after his sister and Tansin but Drake refuses to let him because he is too close to this.  Suddenly someone calls out, “THE COPS ARE COMING!!”  Drake asks Dara to quickly help the others to remove all traces of what has just happened.  Dara asks, “What about the vampires who serve Tansin and Kyah that are still alive but injured?”  Drake looks up and sees that the sun is rising and still pissed off at what has happened simply tells Dara coldly to let them burn in the morning sun. 

Dara goes off and does as he has been instructed and whilst he is doing that Drake orders Gitan, Newar and Jake Gamaleil to hunt down Tansin and Malise and to bring Malise’s head to him on a silver platter.  

Jake and Newar go to the rooftops and as Gitan goes to do the same, he turns to Drake and asks, “Should we do this quietly and keep ourselves hidden from the humans or reveal ourselves?”  Drake replies, “Do whatever it takes.”  Gitan then goes to the roof as well. 

As Gitan and the others are moving swiftly across the rooftops tracking Tansin and Malise’s scent Dara and the others have almost removed all the evidence of the battle. 

As Drake gets into the car he instructs Dara to return to New Atlantis as soon as possible.  Out of nowhere appears the lichen that had earlier been peeled like a banana, he grabs the side of the car and the door, keeping it open.  He snaps violently at Drake trying to bite him.  It barely misses Drake’s face with its teeth.  Drake hears a loud shot ring out and with that the lichen's head instantly explodes but Drake cannot see where the shot has come from.  He closes the car door and instructs the driver to go. 

After they leave Seneca turns the cloaking device off and reveals herself and Cinaed as she is chambering out the very last round from the 50 calibre.  As she strips the weapon down and packs it away she tells Cinaed to follow Gitan and Newar and to give them all the assistance that they may need.  Cinaed simply nods and disappears.  Seneca watches Dara leave and before the Police arrive she goes down to where Josie was lying, she sees a small glint under the floor-boards, she raises her fist and strikes them with such force that the floor-boards become like powder.  She reaches down and then pulls her hand back up and when she opens her hand there laying in her palm is the remainder of the necklace that Arlia had given to Josie.  Seneca looks up just as the Police are coming through the door, they yell, “DON'T MOVE!”  As Seneca begins to move back into the shadows she kicks the torches out of their hands and they open fire on her. When they finish shooting, pick the torches up and shine them to where she had been there is nothing but bullet-holes left in the wall and she is nowhere to be seen. 

The chauffeur-driven car that Drake is in is making it’s way as quickly as possible back to their home.  There is music playing in the car, the driver goes to turn it off but Drake asks him to leave it on since it is one of his favourite songs that Cassidy used to play for him when he was still in the maturation tank.  The song is one of Nickelback’s called “Gotta Be Somebody”, it is just finishing the first chorus.  Drake listens to the words of the song and it reminds him of how he was before and after he found his true love.  

Gotta Be Somebody by Nickelback (Official Video)

Back on the rooftops of the city buildings Gitan and Newar along with Jake Gamaleil, and several other immortals and humans, have tracked Tansin and Malise’s scent to Flinders Street Railway Station.  They leave the rooftops of the buildings and enter the station.  Newar commands the other hunters and acolytes “to spread out and to find those two bitches”.  Gitan and Newar head down to platforms 2 & 3 as Jake goes down to platforms 4 & 5.   When they reach the platforms they each stand still and sniff the air and they pick up a strong scent and follow it on to one of the trains.  After going through several of the carriages they come to what they believe is Tansin and Malise.  As one of these young ladies stands up Gitan reaches out and grabs her saying, “You’re not going anywhere, you monster!” 

With his teeth and claws bared he spins her around and suddenly gets a shock when the hood that was covering her face falls backwards to reveal that this is just a simple human female.   Gitan goes on to ask, “Where did you get these jackets from?”  The two young ladies explain that they were given to them freely by two other girls.  When Newar asks if they saw where they went one of the girls points to the train that has just left.  As they step out onto the platform and cross to the other side they see Tansin standing at the very back of the train with her right hand raised and waving to them with a sinister grin on her face. 

By this time Drake, with Cassidy & Josie in their injured states, have just arrived at the house.  Keira is there to greet them with several of the medical staff from New Atlantis who assist Drake in bringing Cassidy and Josie into the house. Drake orders them to take Josie to Arlia’s room.  Keira says, “Shouldn’t we take her to New Atlantis as well?”  Drake answers by saying, “We can’t take an unknown human to New Atlantis and having her discover that immortals truly do exist.  After they place Josie gently in the bed Drake orders Keira to watch over her until he returns with Alexandra.

Keira tells Drake that Alexandra is not in New Atlantis, Drake asks, “Where is she?”  Keira replies, “By now she is probably on the island of Mykonos visiting her family’s property and her mother and her sister’s graves.  Drake says that as soon as he arrives in New Atlantis he will send for Alexandra.

The moment that Drake arrives he instructs them to send for Alexandra Dimitrou, as he watches them place Cassidy into a specially made operating theatre that works much the same as a maturation tank except that this chamber also holds many medical pieces of equipment.  While they are all waiting for Alexandra to arrive Drake wonders how the guys are getting on with hunting down Malise and Tansin. 

Newar, on seeing how smug Tansin is, yells out to the others and tells them exactly where Tansin is and moments after doing this he takes his full lichen form and by the time he hits the tracks running he is now in his four legged form.  The other lichens do the same and begin to follow him.  This terrifies all the people who are waiting on the platforms and causes them to run for their lives and trip over each other as they all try to make it up the escalators and steps.  If they thought that was bad, as they are clambering up the escalators there are several harlequins still up in the main part of the station who also begin to transform.  As they do so they fly down over the fleeing people.  Their transformation also causes chaos throughout the entire station.

Two of the harlequins fly down towards Jake Gamaleil and as they fly past him they grab hold of his wrists and carry him along with them. 

As the Police reach the bottom and the ends of the platforms they cannot believe their eyes at what they are witnessing, they simply stand there and watch about half a dozen lichens racing along the train tracks as the harlequins follow swiftly behind them in the air. 

On the island of Mykonos an old man who has served her family for many years approaches Alexandra whilst she is visiting her mother and sister’s graves.  The old man says, “Sorry for disturbing you at this time but I have an urgent message for you.”  Alexandra who was just finishing up at the graves anyway stands up and turns around to face him, taking the message from him she begins to read.  At first she is delighted to find out that Drake is finally awake but as she reads more of the contents of the message she finds out that some of the friends she has known over the years have been killed in a battle with Tansin and Malise.  Worse than this she reads that Cassidy and Josie have been seriously injured and need her expertise to save them.  She looks up at the old man and begins to ask, but before she can finish he holds out his hand and opens it before her and there in his hand is a single teleportation crystal.  Alexandra quickly takes it as she says, “Teleport me to New Atlantis.”  In the blink of an eye she is standing in the same room as Drake and the other medical staff.  Alexandra asks who will assist her in the medical procedures she will be doing.  She is told that the only personnel available are interns but that they are supposed to be the best in their fields.  Alexandra says, “Let’s get to it then.”

Nevermore by Adrian Von Ziegler

As each person takes up their position on the controls around the tank Alexandra says to Drake, “It’s really nice to see you and to see that you are finally out of the maturation tank.”  As they begin to work on Cassidy Drake lets Alexandra know that there is another patient who will need their help but that she is back at the house.  Alexandra and her team activate several pieces of equipment which take up position over the wounds in both the front and back of Cassidy’s body.  They move forward, suction down and screw into place. 

Alexandra looks through the microscope and with the assistance of one of the others begins to drill simultaneous holes front and back into the shaft of the spear.

Moments after the train arrives at Southern Cross Station, Tansin and her people are pushing all the humans out of the way in order to get out of the carriage before Gitan, Newar or anyone else can reach them.  Just at that moment Gitan comes crashing through the rear door of the carriage.  One of Malise’s people draws out a cross-bow and begins to fire at Gitan.  Gitan does a roll in the air and ends up stuck to the roof, then he works his way across the roof.  Just as the one with the cross-bow gets the perfect shot, Gitan vanishes before his eyes and then appears behind him.   Gitan draws out one of his daggers, spins it around in his hand and because the other person has the cross-bow in his hand his arm is in the perfect position as Gitan drives the dagger through his arm, out the other side, then he slides the blade all the way through the flesh all the way up to the elbow.  Gitan draws out his sword and thrusts the sword up running the blade through his opponents skull nailing him to the roof of the train. 

As he draws his sword down the blade is left stuck in his enemies skull and a new blade appears.  As Gitan is leaving the train he sees Newar coming up on to the platform ploughing through the barrier and bending the bars as if they were made of lead.  Newar cruises past Gitan and as he does so he takes a swipe at one of the immortals and misses, he slides and tries to dig his claws in more to get traction but he pulls himself up so hard that he flies through the air and partly mauls the immortal.  As he is going up the escalator the gauntlets that are carried on his belt on his hips, begin to meld with the bio-mesh and becomes full body armour and the blades protrude from his sides.  So as he goes up the escalator he begins to slice through all the humans and immortals that serve Tansin.  As he makes it to the top Jake Gamaleil is already there and taking on more of the humans and immortals.

As the rest of the lichens and harlequins that followed them from the nightclub make it to the platform and to where they are they begin attacking Tansin’s people and ripping them apart and burning them to a crisp. 

Alexandra is now ready to perform one of the most difficult parts of the operation, she activates one of four small bladed circular saw cutting devices and then begins.  As she is cutting the now very thin walled shaft she must make sure that the blades do not cut all the way through as Cassidy slowly brings her heart back to being solid.   Alexandra knows that she has to cut only 99% of the way through before they can begin to extract what remains of the shaft but as she is doing this she is distracted when she notices that Drake is having difficulty concentrating due to severe pain in his head.  As Alexandra is watching him she realises what is going on and thinking out loud she says, “Oh shit, NOT NOW!”   She realises that Drake is beginning to get his memory back but this time it is worse since a tattoo that has been magically hidden begins to reappear, line by line, on his left inner forearm. 

Being so distracted she has not realised that the cutting blades have gone all the way through until one of the young female interns yells to her to watch out and concentrate on what she is doing.  She quickly brings the blades to a stop before Cassidy has finished bringing her heart back to its solid form.  Alexandra puts her hand up to her head and breathes a huge sigh of relief, thinking, “Phew, that was too close!”  As she instructs the others to remove what is left of the shaft and start the blood filtration process to remove what is left of the iron particles, she gets up to go over to Drake. 

When she reaches him she can hear him talking to himself about the tattoo as he is looking at the tattoo and remembering what it means and why he has it.  Alexandra goes on to quickly ask him if he can hand her a small crystal that is on the desk.  As Drake picks it up he suddenly stops and gets a really blank look on his face due to the crystal that he is now holding, it is what they used to continually wipe his conscious and some of his sub-conscious memory.  Alexandra takes the crystal from him and Drake goes on to say, “I’m sorry, what were we talking about?”  Alexandra, “We were talking about going to help Josie now as it will take Cassidy a while before she can leave the surgery maturation tank.” 

After getting all the equipment they need both Drake, Alexandra and the young interns arrive back in the house in Melbourne.  Alexandra begins to scan Josie with a hand held scanner to see exactly how badly injured she is.  Most of all she is worried about the head injuries that Josie has suffered.  She says, “We can take care of this, we’ll just use some of the fluid from the maturation tank to heal her.”  Alexandra picks up the injection device and without anyone seeing she fits it with a double needle so as she gives Josie the injection she is able to withdraw a sample of Josie’s blood at the same time. 

Meanwhile back at Southern Cross Station several of the elementals hit Tansin with direct blasts of fire, ice and lightning.  Tansin puts her hand out in front of her, rotating her hand so that the palm faces outwards catching the next blast that the elementals have created.  But sorely, for the elementals, they do not realise until it is far too late, that Tansin has actually sucked them dry of their energy and is now sucking them dry of their life-force.  Seeing this Jake Gameliel tries to intervene by taking one of the pistols from the belt across his chest, he takes aim and fires, smoke and flame shooting from the barrel.  He watches as the musket ball hits Tansin squarely in the side of the head.  This doesn’t even faze her, she merely flinches and continues to drain the energy from the elementals.  By the time Jake draws one of his cutlasses and partly severs Tansin’s shoulder from the rest of her body it is already too late, she has already caused the deaths of two of the elementals.  Jake helplessly watches as she drains the last elemental of her life-force and she turns into a pile of melted flesh and bone.  Tansin’s shoulder then heals where it was severed. 

Without warning Malise grabs a young child from her mother’s arms, she holds the child up above her head and threatens to rip the innocent child to pieces if they do not back down. 

After Alexandra has given Josie the injection, Josie begins to bleed profusely covering Alexandra from head to waist in blood.  Josie goes into massive convulsions and Drake asks what is causing this.  Alexandra says, “I have no idea. She must be having an allergic reaction to the injection.”   Alexandra asks the others who are there with them to hold Josie down, but this is hard to do because Josie is so badly bruised.  Josie suddenly sits up and lets out a very loud blood-curdling scream which causes everyone to step back from her.  She continues to scream in agony.  Alexandra asks the youngest of the interns, who is just 15, for the neutraliser serum but as she looks for it in the case she cannot find it.  She tells Alexandra that they must have left it behind. 

Deranged Woman Screaming

Drake’s eyes turn ice blue like an elemental and he suddenly opens his hand and there is the neutraliser.  He quickly jabs the needle into Josie’s neck which causes her to stop screaming and to fall back into the pillows on the bed.                     ......To Be Continued