Child of Chaos Read online

  Child

  of

  Chaos

  ---( Book One)---

  By Harmon Cooper

  Copyright © 2019 by Harmon Cooper

  Copyright © 2019 Boycott Books

  Edited by Allison Erin Wright

  Audiobook narrated by Neil Hellegers, produced by Tantor Media

  www.harmoncooper.com

  [email protected]

  Email signup: https://geni.us/HCReaders

  Facebook Group: https://geni.us/ProximaGalaxy

  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HarmonCooperWriter

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  To Sor, my eternal love.

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Part One: The Long Night

  .1.

  .2.

  .3.

  .4.

  .5.

  .6.

  Part Two: The Before Times

  .1.

  .2.

  .3.

  .4.

  .5.

  .6.

  .7.

  Part Three: Sewer Discovery

  .1.

  .2.

  .3.

  .4.

  Part Four: A Day’s Wake

  .1.

  .2.

  .3.

  .4.

  .5.

  .6.

  Part Five: Psychological Warfare

  .1.

  .2.

  .3.

  .4.

  Part Six: Tumbling Down

  .1.

  .2.

  .3.

  .4.

  .5.

  .6.

  .7.

  Part Seven: The Shadow of Tomorrow

  .1.

  .2.

  .3.

  .4.

  .5.

  Part Eight: Reign in Blood

  .1.

  .2.

  .3.

  .4.

  .5.

  .6.

  Epilogue

  Back of the Book Content

  Prologue

  We were supposed to be the good guys.

  Tell that to the exemplars standing in a room strewn with bodies, walls caked in blood, claw marks streaked across the floors.

  Tell that to Amethyst, who was swaying from side to side, the beast morpher’s muscles twitching, blood vessels pulsing, her terrifying snarls filling the space, horns scraping against the floor as she tried to stand, the stink of alcohol radiating from her skin.

  Scream it from the top of some crumbling rooftop in Ravja, the Western Province city that was as grand as it was war-torn. Piss it into the stream of consciousness. Carve it into your own flesh. Whisper it into the ear of the dead vampire lying at my feet.

  We were supposed to be the good guys, the Protectorate.

  We weren’t supposed to be the ones that created the monsters.

  Part One: The Long Night

  .1.

  (Present day.)

  “I’m tracking it,” I told Amethyst, watching as a pale creature slipped over some rubble.

  “Track it or kill it—there is no try,” she said in the usual snarl that came with her transformation.

  Ram horns had grown out of her skull, and she was swaying, intoxicated. The smell of alcohol overpowered the stench of death.

  “Here we go,” I said as the data floated before me, beamed from an Eastern Province apparatus on my headgear. “Yep. This one has been tagged.”

  “Do tell.” Amethyst’s red eyes flickered as she watched the vampire scurry away.

  [Ronda Septo]

  [Age: 26 F]

  [Hometown: Korkovin]

  [Status: non-exemplar]

  [Time since infection (estimate): five days]

  “Non-ex, female, from Kork,” I relayed to her.

  Amethyst sped away, her barbed tail whipping behind her.

  My patrolmate was wicked fast in her beast form, especially when she dropped to all fours. Her back legs propelled her forward as she slammed her horns into the vampire. The two struggled for a moment, tumbling in the gravel.

  It wasn’t long before Amethyst ripped the woman’s arm off using her barbed tail. The naked vampire squealed and hissed as Amethyst proceeded to beat the woman with the bloodied stub. She pulled her hand back and activated an energy blade, driving it into the female vampire’s chest.

  Done.

  “Destry, behind you!”

  Not done.

  It was too goddamn late to activate my energy blade.

  The vampire had already latched on, the muscular monster going straight for my neck. It met my clavicle, and my flesh pulled aside as more of my own bone tore from my skeleton, wrapping around the vampire’s neck.

  The creature managed to swipe its claws at my face, and one of its nails cut into my cheek.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” I growled, the blood from my cheek staining my teeth.

  The noose I’d created out of my own clavicle started to grow in size. The bone compounded upon itself as it thickened and moved the writhing vampire out in front of me, no longer within arm’s reach.

  Like I said, muscular, with beady eyes and pockmarks across his face.

  “You aren’t supposed to play with them,” Amethyst called over to me.

  “Says the lady who just beat one to death with its own arm.” I gritted my teeth as I felt a strain on my skeleton, waiting for the man’s details to appear on my Heads Up Display.

  [Evan Mod]

  [Age: 49 M]

  [Hometown: Ravja]

  [Status: non-exemplar]

  [Time since infection (estimate): ten days]

  “Tagged.” And with that, I cracked the vampire’s neck and brought him to the ground. I drove my energy blade deep into his back, killing the man for good.

  I cringed as my bone returned to my body and reformed back into my skeleton. The pain was something I was used to by now, yet it still managed to catch me off guard from time to time.

  “How many? We done for the night yet?” Amethyst asked as she carried the woman she’d killed over to me. She threw her on the stack of bodies behind us, mostly vampires but also a few drained bodies we’d found.

  “By my count…”

  We heard a terrible cry from a building across from us. Amethyst took off almost immediately, her tail bouncing behind her. I cleared the rubble and watched as a blast of purple energy ripped Amethyst from her feet, sending her skidding backward.

  An exemplar.

  Glass exploded outward, the same energy looping around Amethyst’s legs and dragging her into the building, which was formerly a gym based on the signage.

  My own transformation took place as I ran, my specially made armor moving aside as bone ripped from my skin to form spikes and a hardened shell over most of my body.

  I wasn’t all the way morphed, maybe at the sixty-percent mark, but I could definitely feel the added weight slow me down as I ran.

  And just like that, I was transported back to my youth, to Ravja’s Turnstone District, a childhood cut short when I’d been sold by my father to the State, a time when I’d run through a set of streets that perfectly resembled our current location.

  The last time I’d ever known childhood freedom, before I became a child of chaos.

  Strange for a memory to come at a time like this, as adrenaline hissed through me, but it had happened during my transformations before. Something about the chemicals it released in my body when my bones punctured my own flesh…

  At least that was what the doc had told me.

  My reverie was stripped away once another blast came from the building, tearing down an outward-facing wall. I pivoted just in time, keeping my speed as the gravel exploded into bits and pieces all around me.

  Knowing my bone armor would protect me, I dove into the former gymnasium and rolled to the right, coming to my feet in front of a set of kettlebells.

  I saw Amethyst’s reflection in the cracked mirror, her horns scraping against the ground as she continued to be pulled in by a purple tractor beam. I couldn’t yet see the exemplar, the superpowered fucker who had attacked her, but I could see the trail of his energy.

  So I did what anyone with enhanced strength due to a weird bone mutation would do. I grabbed a kettlebell and tossed it at the exemplar as I rounded the corner.

  It connected, and the bastard went down hard.

  “You threw a fucking kettlebell!?” Amethyst roared with laughter, literally. When she was in her morphed form, not only did she stink of booze, but her laughs and bellows were difficult to distinguish from one another.

  “It worked, didn’t it?” I asked as I reached her, another kettlebell in my hand.

  I saw the vampiric exemplar struggling on the ground, the bastard trying to heal from organ damage as he gnashed his teeth.

  I brought the kettlebell down onto his face. While this would definitely add to his medical bills, it wouldn’t kill a vampire, which was why my arm began to form into a large lance made of bone.

  The fucker hissed, his tongue flicking out of his destroyed face, shattered bits of teeth dribbling down his bloody chin as the bastard still tried to bite me.

  I pressed my bone lance into his chest and quickly finished the job.

  “You’re supposed to use your wrist guard,” Amethyst said with a snarl, getting back to her feet.

&n
bsp; “I’ve used my bone weapons to kill these things a million times; I haven’t been infected yet. You know I can control my blood.”

  “Destry, protocol. You’re the one who’s supposed to be reminding me of that, Mr. Junior Commanding Officer,” Amethyst said as she got to her feet. “Tag him yet?”

  “Yep,” I said, reviewing the information presented before me.

  [Oliver Blue]

  [Age: 19 M]

  [Hometown: Bretnick]

  [Status: Exemplar II, D, enhanced energy manipulation]

  [Time since infection (estimate): eleven days]

  “And?”

  “Type II, Class D with enhanced energy manipulation abilities. Infected eleven days,” I said as some of my bone armor merged back into my body and the pain spiraled through me.

  Amethyst straightened, taking a quick look around the gym. “Think that’s all of them?”

  I sighed. “It never is.”

  .2.

  Amethyst dragged the dead V’s body to the roofless building where we had started our body stack. We were in the cordoned-off area of the city of Ravja, the far-reaching edges of Overtone Heights, with shadows, terror, and darkness everywhere we turned. We’d been working here for days, camping out on rooftops and in abandoned rooms.

  Living the good life.

  Ravja had been ground zero for a proxy war between the Northern and Southern Alliance for years; those bastard rune users had been arguing over arcane nonsense since long before I’d been born.

  The city was also, conveniently enough, where the vampire infestation had taken place in two of Ravja’s more expansive districts, infecting both non-exemplars and exemplars—people without superpowers and those with enhanced abilities.

  Our job as the Protectorate was to clean up a perpetual mess.

  “Nice night,” Amethyst growled, snarky as always. “Too bad we have to meet with the others tomorrow.”

  “Is this really that romantic?”

  “It depends on who you ask. The moon is just right, a little cloud coverage, a soft breeze.”

  “Please…”

  “Just let me enjoy it,” she said with a playful growl.

  “Enjoy away.”

  Once the exemplar’s body was stacked with the other Vs, Amethyst tapped her palm. A button on her wrist guard switched it from energy blade to blaster mode.

  “Give me some juice,” she instructed me, her voice a hoarse growl.

  “I can do it.”

  “I want to light it.”

  “As you wish.” I took a metal canteen of fuel from my backpack. Amethyst’s pack was near mine as well; we’d both gotten good at finding places to stash our gear when hunting time began.

  “Don’t use too much,” she reminded me.

  “We still have plenty left.” I placed my finger over the opening of the canteen and lightly spritzed the stack of bodies.

  “And they’re all tagged?” she asked, her voice still tinged with anger and fury due to her transformation. Amethyst would be like this for another thirty minutes or so, unless she drank more alcohol.

  “I just need to load them up.”

  Returning to my pack, I stuffed my canteen in a side pocket and wiped my finger on the strap. After a little searching around, I brought out a small tablet cased in thick black plastic. Like my headgear, this was also Eastern Province tech, the type of shit the general public would never see.

  The screen lit up.

  --Enter Passcode--

  “Shit, what’s the passcode?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “That’s right.” I typed in the words, watching the screen light up with each letter.

  The screen flashed red.

  “Is ‘fuck you’ in all caps?” I asked.

  “Yes—why can’t you remember this?”

  “Sorry,” I told Amethyst as I punched in the code. I plugged in my headgear and waited for it to load up.

  [Ronda Septo]

  [Red Bernard]

  [Oliver Blue]

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  [Ronda Septo]

  [Red Bernard]

  [Oliver Blue]

  “The thing is glitching out,” I told her.

  “Try hitting it.”

  “We should be more careful with our tech.”

  Amethyst snorted. “Whatever. What’s the count for the evening so far?”

  “Okay, that I can find out.”

  I pressed the sideways triangle that indicated the “back” button and was presented with a number, plus a list of names.

  [Ronda Septo] [Evan Mod] [Oliver Blue]

  [Stone Greenlock] [Edward Gray] [Patrick Blue]

  [Zara Beige] [Freda Bane] [Red Bernard]

  [Cranston Black] [Gary Stone] [Todd Klock]

  [Kory Redface] [Jenny Lou] [Walter Mapes]

  “Fifteen,” I said as I unplugged my headgear. Once it powered down, I put the tablet up and returned my headgear to its proper place.

  “It doesn’t look like fifteen,” she said as she eyed the stack. Her tail hung in the air just over her shoulder, bobbing like the tail of a cat.

  “Children.”

  “Lurkers,” was all Amethyst said as she stepped back.

  I nodded. We both hated lurkers, which was what we called the smaller vampires that were fonder of surprise attacks than coming at us head-on.

  The fire started up almost immediately, and by the time it was really raging, both of us had our backpacks on and were heading back to the main street.

  We’d seen what these fires could attract.

  “Where should we post up?”

  I glanced at the rooftops, looking for one with the best vantage point, a place that wouldn’t leave us boxed in. We had been in the field a week and a half now, and I was getting accustomed to finding good spots to rest. I sort of had a knack for it.

  “You’re doing the shooting, right?” Amethyst asked. “I’m too shaky in this form.”

  “As always,” I told her once I spotted a place that used to be a bank.

  “Thanks, Destry.”

  There was a fire escape on the partially cratered building half a block away that I would be able to use to hop down onto an adjoined rooftop. We’d need to destroy this route of entry once we landed, but I was fine with that.

  There were other ways for me to climb, but using the terrain presented to me was easier.

  Plus, the rooftop in question was upwind. And for someone who had smelled enough burning bodies, this was key.

  How many stacks had we burned since this tour of the infected districts? It didn’t matter; it was what our government had ordered, and the politicians calling for more death as they came up for reelection were marginalizing an already marginalized creature.

  To what end?

  I despised the Vs just as much as any other soldier who’d had to take one down, but even with all the faces of death I’d seen, I still couldn’t forget they had once been human.

  They had once been like me.

  The woman Amethyst had beaten to death with her own arm? Someone’s sister. A teacher, for all I knew.

  The guy I’d pegged with the kettlebell? Someone’s uncle, brother, father.

  Who knew?

  But we had to follow orders, and so we followed them, sometimes becoming just as terrible as the things we were hunting. No sense in trying to find a cure when a knife to the gut would do the trick.

  “You’re up,” I told Amethyst when we reached the roof in question.

  The beast morpher scaled to the top of the roof using her powerful hind legs and claws, with her tail occasionally looping around the bars over the windows for balance.

  The average person wouldn’t believe that the horned woman with red eyes, sharp claws, and a barbed tail was actually one of the most beautiful people I had ever seen. Amethyst, the unmorphed version—with her purple-red hair, dark eyes, soft skin, full lips, and shapely figure—was a pleasure to look at.

  But what stood on the rooftop reeking of alcohol, watching as I took the fire escape, was a far cry from the girl I had trained alongside for the last twelve years.

  Frightening.

  Once I scaled the fire escape, I dropped down to the rooftop and made my way over to Amethyst.

  Her shoulders moved up and down as she sucked in raspy breaths.

  She always breathed harder in this form; I had seen in her medical records that the transformation put an incredible strain on her heart.