Raptor the Avenger , livre ebook

Title Page
RAPTOR THE AVENGER
by
Robin Bennett



Publisher Information
Raptor the Avenger
Published in Great Britain in 2014 by
Monster Books
The Old Smithy, Henley-on-Thames
OXON RG9 2AR
Digital edition converted and distributed in 2015 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© 2015 Robin Bennett
The right of Robin Bennett to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.



Prologue
It is 1890. Three hundred years have passed since Moüsch found the Chalice and returned it to the Keep. The Industrial Age of Humans grinds ever onwards and the Hidden Kingdom is in disarray: Faies have all but disappeared, their Leaf Castles lie empty and their magic faint, all but untraceable throughout most of the Hidden Kingdom; as for the Vampires, they are locked in civil war and Corbeau is ascendant, his complete victory more just a matter of time. His Horde - slaved Vampires, Weres and freaked Wightish creatures - are poised to conquer the seat of all natural magic: once Albion, then Angleland ... now England.
The Age of Aquarius is coming to pass. The End of Days.
Closer to home - in the Carpathian Mountains - Weres are straying more frequently from the forest, wild, half-mad and hungry, destabilising the lands around the Keep that have become barren border country, contested and void of the rich veins of life from the Hidden Kingdom that thrived there not more than a generation previously.
Once Corbeau has assembled enough of his Horde they will march on the Keep under the Thin Man’s Banner, kill the Eltern, wipe out the noble families, and claim the Chalice for the Thin Man whose spectral presence lurks in the shadows, but is moving closer by the day.
But Corbeau has an obstacle - a young Vampire, former slave, of no noble bloodlines, of no consequence ... and yet.
This is Raptor’s story. Raptor the Avenger.



Part I
Picus
Chapter 1
London
Corbeau’s most, perhaps only, enduring legacy was the invention of genetic engineering.
A high window, looking out over the Thames. A tumbling tsunami of fog spreading out from the river, jaundiced and foul.
The year is 1892.
Raptor, Protector of the Free Vampire Nation in Albion, Boy-General/Thug stuck his head out of a hole in the roof of the Human tenement, noticing how the fog had all but obliterated the first floor and was rising to the lower half of the second floor. Time to be off.
Foetid breath on his neck, warm and rotten.
Raptor’s skeleton did a silent jig. Keep calm, he thought. ‘Corbeau,’ he said without moving a muscle.
‘Raptor.’ The words were whispered, with their curiously ancient vampiric intonation that had been noted, centuries before, by another Vampire. He’s bearing his teeth now, thought Raptor, feeling blood-blackened fangs grazing the down on the nape of his neck. He’d seen plenty of the victims - ragged throats, bloodless cadavers; within a microsecond Corbeau would have clamped his enhanced jaws around the Strigoi’s neck, severing nerves, crushing voice organs, leaving him alive yet utterly unable to speak or move ... whilst Corbeau fed on him at his leisure.
But Raptor only needed a microsecond. Watch this, he thought, dropping back through the skylight.
Corbeau predicted the move and followed him down. What he was not prepared for, however, was the sheer velocity with which Raptor then came back the other way: springing his feet off a rafter, wings lashing the air, all of his considerable strength and mental power focused on one fluid movement up , reaching the speed of sound even before Corbeau’s jaws snapped painfully shut on thin air.
Corbeau spat out a shattered canine and then his skin seemed to turn in on itself; revealing wet muscle, whipcords of pale sinew as his jaw extended.
He’s getting stronger. Raptor watched, just a hundred yards away, from the safety of dense swathes of fog. And madder. He saw that Corbeau’s half-change was complete as this raw creature - part Vampire and flayed Were - scanned the fog for signs of his quarry through red, tormented eyes. Then ...
Uh, oh, thought Raptor, as Corbeau’s gaze was suddenly riveted by a minute disturbance in the fog, a small puncture hole. A million-in-one guess. Corbeau leapt from the roof, leathery wings beating the air with a hiss that quickly became a howl, massive canines extending ...
Raptor opened his eyes.
He lay perfectly still for a few minutes, taking in the sunlight, the familiar surroundings, and the feel of the cool linen sheets between his fingers. He took a moment to remember where he was.
Oxford had been the home of the rebellion for over a decade and they had set up a network of cells around the town, no more than fifty Vampires to a unit, in case they were discovered - mainly in college wine cellars, some interconnected with tunnels, most independent.
Anyone else may have shivered, in spite of the currents of warm air circulating around the room, but for Raptor the memory of his last encounter with Corbeau was simply a practical reminder to be more careful next time. Even by Vampire standards, he was almost entirely immune to the primeval instinct that says ’ ware your unguarded thoughts and dreams, fear your unnamed fears ... run from monsters.
Although it was light, it was still early and so he stayed where he was. He closed his eyes again.
Why the transformation? What was Corbeau trying to turn himself into? Certainly it seemed to give him more power on the surface of things - more bulk, muscle mass, larger bite. As a soldier, Raptor could see the benefits in all of that. But Raptor suspected making himself into the monster outwardly was a form of acceptance, as if Corbeau was finally allowing his appearance to mirror his inner garrotted and tormented nature.
It also made you a byword for evil. If others of the Hidden Kingdom feared you, half the battle was won.
This was partly why Raptor had strayed into the Horde’s territory so deliberately. Certainly it was a useful recce, but at the same time, he was at pains to show that a Vampire could still move freely within England, even the heart of London whose sewers and slums teemed with the growing numbers of Corbeau’s army. A Shadow Society in the Real.
He had still been taken by surprise at how fast Corbeau had picked him up and how he’d managed to get so close without Raptor spotting him. Raptor still had the speed and, if it came to it, the skill to defeat Corbeau in single combat, but he doubted that state of affairs would continue. But it had been worth it. He had finally located the seat of Corbeau’s Horde. It lay between the mouth of the Fleet and the convergence of effluent that poured, day and night, into the mudflats leading down to a sluggish Thames.
Corbeau had chosen it because it afforded him a large covered area that Humans avoided, or at least most of them. The Rebels were getting reports that Corbeau had been bartering knowledge with Humans. Again, there was evidence of this down here: near the mudflats Raptor had seen a small troop of Wights filing past carrying what looked like heavy truncheons, but were on closer inspection, he concluded, what Men called a blunderbuss: a heavy, ornately cast tube of metal stuffed with gunpowder, ball bearings, nails and stones. Fired at close range, even a Vampire would be shredded before he had time to move.
He’d first sensed, rather than seen evidence of Corbeau’s underground citadel from the street above - a dull clanking, at the absolute lower range of his hearing but more, a feeling of oppressive activity emanating from the gaps in the cobbles and the half-clogged drains.
Raptor flew down to street level. It was dusk but Humans were still about: packing up at the end of a day, loading carts with unsold produce, going home or, for some, leaving home to ply any one of a hundred trades that Raptor, for all his time spent in cities, had only the vaguest understanding of.
Keeping to the shadows, he crept close to a drain and listened.
There it was again. The clanking and very faint voices, unmistakeably Wightish in intonation.
He began to climb down.
He followed the walls, which were thick with a green slime that slowly turned to a grey paste and smelled strongly of Human wastes and fat. The distant noises got louder yet Raptor could easily have missed the entrance to the recently built tunnel. It was no larger than head height for Raptor and obscured by piping, but on closer inspection it seemed obviously Vampire , so strangely familiar and in contrast to the wider Human tunnelling, and within a few yards it was clean and dry with sweeter, warmer air being pumped up from below. Raptor continued more cautiously now as the tunnel broadened and, as it descended far into the distance, he thought he could see a dim light.
He had been walking for at least half an hour by his estimation before he came to a fork and the sound of Wights arguing just around the corner.
‘We’ll need more silver, the Karls won’t be doing with iron, even for the Weres.’
‘And where do they think we can get that in an ’urry?’
‘Same place as usual - Oomans.’
‘Course - so are you goin’ to ask, or will