Raptor the Avenger

By Robin Bennett

The three very different Vampires, Picus, Moüsch and Raptor must unite the Hidden Kingdom to survive.

Think you know the truth about Vampires? Well, think again. A mysterious volume in an unknown tongue, a thief who could change the course of the world and a closely-guarded secret, older than Humankind...

"Robin Bennett's Picus the Thief is that seemingly impossible take on the genre - funny, intelligent, imaginative story-telling that mixes Arthurian legend with faeries and vampires and comes up with a unique mix of all three." - SSF Chronicles

"Aimed at the young adult market, the world building is incredible and it's almost impossible not to become immersed in this fantastically realised world of charm and grandeur. The characters are just as lively too, Picus is brilliant as a small but almost indestructible, irrepressible vampire thief who throws himself head first at life's little adventures." - SF Books Reviews (best fantasy fiction for book lovers)

"Picus the Thief is highly original, beautifully imaginative and utterly engaging. It is no mean feat that the author has managed to create a series of interconnected worlds, a loveable central character, as well as a host of other characters that all have genuine depth. If you are looking for gifts for books lovers or top fantasy books, read Picus the Thief."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Monster Books
• Release date: May 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9780992904111

Robin Bennett

Robin Bennett has set up and run over a dozen successful businesses from dog-sitting to tuition to translation. The list is quite exhausting. Robin is married with three young children. He spends his time between Pau in the Pyrenées and Henley-on-Thames.

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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 they drop it off with the laundry?’

‘Don’t need to.’

‘Oh, yeah, why’s that then?’

‘Cos that’s your job - Master of Metals.’

The voices faded, so the practicalities of obtaining silver were lost around the next couple of bends. Silently moving down the other tunnel Raptor reflected, and not for the last time, that Corbeau’s infrastructure was based on strongly practical lines that Raptor’s own forces were lacking. It would explain also why there was almost next to no magical trace down here, just jobs to do. At this point, he thought this set-up down here was probably just another of the various strongholds ringing the city; Wights making arms, Weres for enforcement and Vampires as the notional leaders, or Karls. No enchantment down here, just a dull but efficient military machine.

Then the tunnel dog-legged and Raptor found himself in a huge empty hall, buttressed and arched in a precise hexagon. Each archway led to another hallway where lights flickered and the hum of Hidden Kingdom activity could be heard.

So this was it: Corbeau’s underground lair, a sort of Citadel inverted, carved out of bedrock.

Hating the feel of the banded metal he pulled from his bag, Raptor attached the collar to his neck. To most Wights and Weres he would pass as just another slaved Strigoi. If he came across a perceptive Vampire he’d be spotted as an outsider immediately, but Raptor could keep himself low-key better than anyone he knew. Before growing into a physical prowess that meant he could be deadly for any Wight, Were or Vampire, years of slavery as a mere Imp had taught him that survival was being invisible.

Picking an archway at random, he was soon descending a winding spiral staircase made of wood that led to a gantry. The air was hot down here from the smelting bellows and the proximity to the Earth’s geothermics. Raptor jumped lightly up to the gantry and then flew up to the roof, whose crenelations and protrusions afforded shadow and cover.

If Raptor had been in the least familiar with the Human artist Hieronymus Bosch, he would have found the scene below him familiar for all its underground battlements, rivers of fire, dirt and general air of Dark Ages misery. He did however, recognise it for its similarities to similar above-ground installations that the Humans were making. The Factories.

More to the point, all this activity pointed to one thing: the Horde was arming up and preparing to be on the move. Much of Albion was already covered in their spies and garrisoned by Corbeau’s ground troops. All the main towns and cities were his. With one notable exception.

Calmly, dispassionately, Raptor had watched all this from his vantage point and had concluded his Rebels stood no chance: just one of the hundreds of regimented brigades down there would swallow their entire force whole. They could harry and torment the Horde until the Wandering Kings returned and make not a dent in the core force. If ever caught out in the open, the Rebels would be overrun in minutes by Corbeau’s Vanguard.

Safe, but only for the time being, in his own stronghold at Oxford, Raptor concluded that in all this there was one ray of hope: to the west, from the Standing Stones to the Bristol Channel the countryside was seemingly free of any of Corbeau’s battalions; a spotless no mans land. Several times Raptor had tracked small war bands following the Thames to Oxford, then down to Sarum and had then waited. Nothing ... not one Were, slaved Vampire or Wight ever came back. Even Raptor’s own lieutenants were reluctant to cross the border, speaking in ominous tones of dark and powerful Faies still ruling the forests there, of unseen and unnamed creatures living in the barrows of the ancients and a charismatic leader-cum-hermit who led them all.

Raptor, who had been weaned on the prophecies as a Milk Imp, thought he knew who they were referring to.

He sat up in bed, scratched his head and sighed: it was finally time to find the Vampire in the West. The one known by some as Picus.

Chapter 2

Hill Fort

Magic, too, is a subversion of nature.

Dark trees with splayed branches, like talons against a cold night sky. Hidden in the copse, buried deep within the undergrowth, the Pack Leader stirred. He forced his muzzle to the surface and sniffed the air. Free Vampires, moving west, keeping to the scrub along the valley floor. He heard, or rather sensed the rest of the Pack go from hibernation to wakefulness, fully alert in an instant, scents picked up, red eyes scanning from their vantage point.

The Master would have to be told, and then they would attack. Forty strong of Weres against a small army. The Pack Leader, Ripthroat, was immediately sure that with his force he could hold them up for an hour or two, enough time for reinforcements, enough time even for the Master to get there. He turned to his runner, a whip-fast Were who had lain beside him since their long hibernation began. Ripthroat clamped his jaws on the back of the cur’s neck, making the runner, Clawfeet, whimper. ‘Go,’ he growled, tasting the much smaller Were’s blood, the smell igniting a fury in his belly, burning away in an instant the last vestiges of sleep.

Released, Clawfeet skittered sideways on all fours, looking more like a hyena than a Were, glared balefully at Ripthroat who was already ignoring him, then ran, loping through the trees, moving silently east.

The Sleeper Unit was fully awake.

Corbeau had placed them there over a hundred years previously: forty units with forty Weres apiece, spaced out along the ancient Ridgeway. He had known that one day Raptor might seek to escape westwards and he meant to catch his full force in the open and swat the fly once and for all.

Two more runners peeled away from their hiding place. They were no more than fifteen minutes hard running to the next unit. Within half an hour, there would be one hundred and twenty battle-trained Weres and double that before the hour was out.

Ripthroat smelled free Vampires - perhaps three hundred their distinctive scent of living in the open, unlike their slaved counterparts who smelled of stale earth and confinement. They were moving slowly, all but silently with caution but the enchantment that had concealed the Weres held. Ripthroat had time. He decided that when he attacked he would go for the young first, the rest would stop to protect their Imps, instead of fleeing as they should.

Deep within his massive chest he emitted a slow growl, releasing three distinct scents from glands around his anus: Pack Rage Against Trespassers, Master Who Would Be Angry and Fear (of punishment if they did not do something about the Vampires moving across their territory). The scents circulated amongst his troops, raising hackles, and a collective rumble of pent violence.

These were the biggest and least tame of all the Weres Corbeau and his Wights had bred. Basic in the extreme, capable of only taking on a two or four-legged wolf shape, they were fit for purpose: to tear into any force, however outnumbered and inflict maximum damage before sacrificing themselves. None were meant to survive an engagement, unless they slaughtered everything and even then, with the blood lust at its peak, they would often then set upon each other. But it was telling that Corbeau no longer bred them this large or quite as wild - they were too unpredictable and almost impossible to control once the rage had taken hold.

Corbeau had worked the concealment himself and was pleased with a result not in his forte: a triple spell, really: a basic concealment to make the area below the trees utterly obscure, devoid of all light, scent and sound; a charm of confusion to make people wonder what their business might be in the spinney and leave; and a strong hex on anyone who did cross the threshold, which would prove deadly to most of the Hidden Kingdom should they enter. Pure magic very occasionally had its uses.

‘Oh ’ello, Mr. Big Bad Wolf.’

Ripthroat sprang up and spun around, only just stifling a yelp.

Leaning against a tree, less than a sword length behind him, was an ancient looking Vampire with long grey hair tied in tresses, a large hat and boots that positively shone in the moonlight. Aside from that, his clothes were basic, almost unkempt as if he’d long since got used to sleeping rough: he wore a battered breastplate and swordsman’s gauntlets and what once may have been a very fine silver mail shirt. He glanced up from cleaning his nails with what looked like a broken sword. ‘Cor, you’re a bit big aren’t you?’ he remarked.

Ripthroat’s growl became deeper, a steady vibration as the rest of the pack rose up around this odd-looking Nosferatu who had somehow breached the charms and taken them unawares.

Indignation and anticipation of violence reached a peak and met somewhere in the middle range of a howl as they sprang as one. But none as high as Ripthroat who knew how Vampires fought and was sure the incursion would fly up in an instant, to gain height. He’d seen this in the Training Cages and had seen slaved Vampires win over much larger and stronger opponents in this way. Ripthroat had been chosen to represent his regiment in the Cages six times and had been victorious on every occasion. No-one in the Horde had achieved the same. He’d torn to pieces the last Vampire he’d fought in this way, taking seconds to fully joint and dismember the feebly kicking combatant.

There was no crowd to cheer and jeer him on but it had been a long time since he had fought and Ripthroat relished the violence he would inflict in this wood. Forelegs extending to almost-Human hands, albeit clawed and huge, snatched out and found their mark, a dark shape above him. He racked his claws down the torso, keenly anticipating the scream that told him he had his prey, before his senses told him something wasn’t right. Ripthroat swung around the trunk of the tree as the runner Clawfeet’s torso swung back, paunched guts spilling from the rent Ripthroat had made, the rest of his messenger’s corpse remaining tied, upside down, dripping.

Ripthroat leapt down, noting that six of his Weres somehow already lay dead. ‘Group!’ he barked, calling the remainder back into the strategic safety of the clearing, but not before several yelps in quick succession signalled more casualties.

Ripthroat howled in anger and perhaps the beginnings of fear. His Pack, facing one elderly opponent, was somehow down to twenty-five and many of those were bleeding heavily from their sweating flanks. Sensing his trepidation, the Pack had formed a tight circle in the middle of the copse. Ripthroat began to growl again to steady the Pack; he would eat this Vampire’s heart.

Suddenly the centre of the formation seemed to open up as three Weres were hoicked into the trees by an unseen force. Ripthroat raised himself on his hind quarters, his legs straightening, his jaw extending, and snapped at the air. A sudden commotion behind him and a blur of movement, followed by a roar and a jet of pure white flame that punched a hole in the defensive line.

‘Attack!’ He leapt forward but the remaining Weres who followed stopped dead in mid air, their cleanly severed heads rolling forward onto the wet leaves as a swishing noise and nothing more than a shadow made a chopping motion in his peripheral vision. The headless corpses dropped to the floor in a rain of wet thuds.

Ripthroat looked about himself and his dead comrades. A trickle of urine escaped down his fur for the first time since he was a pup. He turned and ran for his life.

All was quiet for a time.

Then Picus stepped out of the shadows where he had been all along, and looked about, his expression unreadable. Muttering something, he drew a nail across the air in front of him: The scene of carnage seemed to peel down the middle, fold back and melt away to reveal the real: thirty nine alive but very comatose Weres. He checked they were still in deep hibernation and would remain so.

Then he looked down the hill.

Whilst fabricating the illusion of the destruction of Ripthroat’s entire Pack, he’d taken the small trouble to break the spells that surrounded the glade, and now Picus noted a breakaway force of the free Vampires coming up the hill, sensing the magical discharge that must have been leaking down the valley like sea mist.

Satisfied this route to safety was now clear for the Vampires below, he melted back into the night.

Chapter 3

March

That an individual could hold a whole territory for so long is so incredible as to be unbelievable. Picus had his allies surely and their offspring still reside in Albion to this day.

Raptor stared at the scene around him. Scenes of violence burst in his head like déjà vu: flashes showing a claw striking, a broken sword slashing down. However, the copse in which his group was standing was quiet and all around him lay Weres in deep sleep. They had tried rousing them, but nothing worked, even the sharp end of a sword prodded into an underbelly. Some were barely breathing, but evidently they had not been involved in the battle whose chaos and ruthlessness still reverberated around the trees.

‘We should cut their throats now and move on.’

Raptor started to nod, then paused. There was something opaque about the visions, something more solid behind these scenes that flashed in his head, quickfire. He could still see the sleeping forms of the Weres, the action seeming insubstantial, like a flimsy overlay. He felt a rush of understanding: it hadn’t happened! Nothing had happened here except some sort of optical illusion.

‘No, wait,’ he said to his Lieutenant, a younger Vampire called Pardolote, who had been about to tell his Sergeant, Egret, to start the slaughter. Pardolote hesitated but knew better than to contradict Raptor.

‘They won’t wake,’ Raptor chose to answer Pardolote’s probable objection anyway. At the same time he was trying to see beyond the illusion, work out why it was there at all. More flashes, something moving across the scene, moving very fast, even by Raptor’s standards. The visions were becoming fainter now, as the excess magic in the copse began to fade, and the violence ebbed too as the fight drew to a close. Another flare and suddenly Raptor had a clear image: another Vampire stood there, his ancient face in sharp focus, the rest indistinct. He seemed to be staring at Raptor, assessing him. The vision was so real that Raptor spun around, expecting to see the outlandish Nosferatu standing there.

The scene finally dimmed and Raptor was left with just his elite troop who had come up the hill and some confused thoughts. Magic, as usual, left him feeling baffled and inadequate.

‘Picked up signs of a lone Were, Sir, making for Sarum.’ The Sergeant Egret came up. ‘Rearguard runner just came in, they’re tracking him - he’s running fast but blind, making a hell of a fuss, crashing into things, like he’s panicked. Big bugger by the sounds of things, too. Runner says he’s never seen anything like it. Mind you, these curs ain’t small neither ...’ Egret paused, as if noticing now that Raptor was not really listening. ‘Sorry, Sir,’ he said uncertainly.

Ah, thought Raptor, he meant for that one Were to escape, the Nosferatu had orchestrated the whole thing. The Were would reach his main unit in Sarum and recount how the entire unit of specially bred Weres had been slaughtered. More to the point Corbeau would be told, which might give him pause. Doubt was a strong weapon.

But why not have just killed them all? Raptor had the strong impression that the Nosferatu he had seen was quite capable of it. But he chose not to ... and Raptor sensed that they were being watched, either by the Vampire or, when he thought about it, something else.

This all took seconds and he came to a decision.

‘Bury them,’ he said, turning to Pardolote, but speaking loudly enough for everyone to hear, perhaps even someone beyond the trees. ‘I want them interred, but not smothered.’

He paused, noting with almost amusement