Become and Arise: Xuroborous, #1

By Jeffrey Batchelder

Andy left Massachusetts with the police hot on his tale. Hopping a freight train headed directly into the path of horrors beyond his comprehension. Lost in the frigid winter of Maine, he thought the cold was his worst enemy until he met his first family of vampires.

Andy had no idea about vampires, and he didn't know about hunters, paranormal experiences or covens. He was another adult who believed horror was something you watched on TV. Xuroborous was the oldest vampire, he had sired many monsters, and he had Andy in his sites as his newest general. Xuroborous needed an army to fight the feral vampires, and Andy was his choice. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Strong Dog Creations, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9781515020981

Book preview

It Is Aware

IN NORTHERN CANADA, just south of the Arctic line, miles from any road, a day’s snowmobile ride from the nearest town, was a place, a dead place, where a hunter would soon fall dead and never be found. A place where anyone, who had ever come close, had gotten a very bad feeling, even bush pilots, who had flown the worst arctic weather and seen the most horrible things the north could offer, would suddenly veer off while flying the area, they never offered a real explanation for their actions, other than they knew that, that is the right thing to do at that moment.

The bear was starving; a cold fall followed by the worst winter in 50 years had left it emaciated. It had woken too early, impending starvation had overridden its hibernation cycle, and it would have starved long before spring had returned. It scratched the ground and pawed for shoot, roots or grubs; there was nothing. It lay down; exhausted and beaten it raised its head and scanned the horizon for signs of food.

The young buck had been driven off by a stronger competitor, hours of fighting and a long run after the lost battle had left it without reserves, breathless and hungry. It looked around for any morsel, early buds of growth, moss, anything edible.  It saw a mushroom from last season, dried and withered, but it instinctual knew of the mushrooms healing properties and its nutrition. It began to crunch through the dead underbrush heading for it, unaware of its impending death.

The bear lifted its head at the sound of brush being trampled, a buck, muscles twitching from exhaustion, shrunken and smaller than average. The bear weighed its options, slow death here, over the next few days or expend the last of its energy and perhaps gain a sustaining meal. It charged. The deer rose its head and saw the bear just as it bounded over the pile of underbrush. The deer leaped, and the bear caught its leg with a glancing blow, enough to open the leg to the bone, but not enough to prevent its escape. The deer bounded up the hill; the brush grew more and more dense, dead, and brittle. The bear headed to run the deer down, tripping on weakened legs and tearing through dead forest debris. The deer paused and looked back, then bounded to the top of the hill, a good hundred yards above the bear. It turned to run again and sighted a worse predator, man, and suddenly it grew weak, disoriented, and it fell unconscious. Its final sensation was the sound of the hunter as he fired a shot. The deer was dead by the time it hit the ground, no gunshot wound, just dead. Below it, the bear had fallen too, it made a final grunting exhale, as it fell into a stack of dead brush and debris.

Some places are born unclean, some places have uncleanliness thrust upon them, and some places grow unclean from the company they have kept. The place where Bob was heading was all three of these things combined. Bob was not tainted, or evil or even very impressive as a human being. Bob was an accountant for a giant conglomerate in northern Canada, a conglomerate that destroyed the environment and gathered precious gems from the destruction. Everyone Bob knew was a miner, or a big rig driver or some kind of operator for the land raping conglomerate. They were all hunters, born and bred in the Great White North to kill anything they saw in their sites and eat it. Bob was from Boston, animals lived in zoos, or they were pigeons, squirrels or rats, and you called an exterminator to handle them. Three years ago, Bob had made a grave error, an error that would actually cost him his life. At the time, it seemed like a way to acquire some comrades in this frozen wasteland, but it really just made him the butt of jokes for three years running. Bob had agreed to become a deer hunter with the rest of the boys, and today he would die for that decision.

Bob was pissed. This was his third year in a row that he had no buck to show for his hunting trip. Every year he had gone further and further out into this freaking Canadian wilderness, to the point where his buddies had left him to hunt on his own.

Every year nothing, small young bucks, tiny females but not a decent deer to even shoot at. This time he was lost, I mean really lost. He had gone to the northwest, he'd run across what looked like an old deer trail, and he walked up the trail for about 100 yards, then he decided because he had found a little scraped up tree branch, that this was the deer trail. He hadn't listed this little side trek on his itinerary, it was in an area he'd never hunted, but his GPS marked his trail back, and hopefully, he would see something with antlers walking down the trail. Had he only known this was his last hunt, he probably wouldn't have been so stingy with the beef jerky, trying to ignore his grumbling stomach. The brush got thicker and thicker, as he looked up across the ridge.

Disappointment grew in his stomach, like a black spot on the tomato, small at first, but spreading so rapidly.

He thought he caught a flash of brown, maybe even a little white tail, out of the corner of his eye. He looked for the most accessible path up toward the possible buck and started to scramble his way up the rocks. He crept over the ridge and there he was . . . He was beautiful, not massive, not a 12 pointer, but a real male deer, close enough to shoot at and maybe, this year, a kill.

Bill is gonna shit hisself when I walk in the weigh station with this baby. He thought as he continued to climb the rocky terrain, trying to be silent.

Bob knew it was futile to pull his gun off his back while he was climbing. He was trying to be quiet, stealthy and doing a pretty good job, he thought. He was downwind, and that was lucky, the deer was looking the other way, and that was lucky too. He had to get up to the top of the ridge now, maybe 100 feet or so. He noticed in front of the deer that the tree line seemed to change, must've been a fire some time ago he thought or something like that.

Everything was dead past a certain line, he worked his way towards the buck, and the buck turned, not as if he caught a scent, just more of a prey scanning habit. Then the buck walked towards the dead tree line.

Bob was almost within range, watching his step, keeping his eyes toward the ground and glancing up toward the buck now and again. Wasn't much down on the ground, some loose gravel and a stick here and there, but that was it. The path circled the dead tree zone. The buck walked around the outer edges of the dead trees. As he started following the deer more closely, it caught his movement and sprang past the line and into the dead trees.

Sum bitch, he got wind of me dammit, Bob thought as he pulled his rifle from its pouch.

He pulled his gun free and lined up the shot, as he was raising his gun. The buck slowed from a sprint to a walk as he headed deeper into the dead area. For a moment it froze, it looked back at him, and its eyes widened. He fired, it seemed as if they deer dropped before the bullet could've hit it, but it didn't matter to Bob, he got his buck.

He was going to have a hell of a time getting the buck and himself out of here; he thought as he bounded for the dead animal. He headed towards it, walking more slowly, looking for motion from the buck. He wasn't even really sure where he'd hit it, it dropped fast, he thought. He kept moving, strange smell, he thought, something he didn't recognize, but he kept moving, and then, as he was closing in on the buck, he started to feel a pain, then he got queasy. It was an odd feeling, something upsetting his stomach? Maybe he'd eaten bad jerky or was he just tired. At that moment he reached the buck. Where’s the bullet hole? he thought.

He couldn't see where the bullet had hit it. Below he heard the last labored exhale of a starving bear and he looked down towards it. Then, something from his caveman's brain . . . It screamed it said something, something it had never said to him before. Not that his primitive caveman brain talked a lot anyway, but this was even deeper, older than man, even older in his simple reptile mind. It sent up a signal, run  his subconscious mind reeled. His fancy accountant pre-frontal cortex tried to analyze where this nonsense had come from and then his mind screamed louder run, damn you, run!

Without even being aware of it, he dropped to his knees, he suddenly felt exhausted, weak maybe some kind... gas . . . from the fire ... some toxic. . .

He fell to the ground, just like the deer, just like the bear. All the life drained from him. Bob was gone, just an empty, lifeless husk, like the deer, like the bear, like the worms in the ground and any birds that had flown over the circle. No buck again this year, but he wouldn't have to listen to the boys give him shit this time.

It had felt Bob fall. If it had anything resembling lips, it would have licked them after this unexpected treat. It had also felt the bear and the deer fall, in fact, it had felt every single thing’s life energy drain from the ever-widening circle it had produced, since it had lain itself to rest here, before Pilgrims or Vikings, before the Crusades even. It had been absorbing every bit of energy that entered an ever-widening circle for a long time, keeping itself in a dozy dreaming state, waiting, in this hypersleep, a hibernation that had lasted far more than the last 1000 years. It had waited for something, something it couldn’t yet comprehend. In the life of a creature such as it, waiting was a large part of its lifespan.

Something inside it had stirred, a thoughts, a sensation, a change, somewhere in the energy flux of the universe, in the ether, something fresh and different, signaling a time for a change. Four thousand years before, it recalled the first change. It had metamorphosed from a frail human shell into a power, a hunger, a creature of lust and consumption. 3000 years later, it changed again, shedding all vestiges of the original human form, it became a true vampire, powerful and completely outside the realm of lust and consumption. Then it slept, long and deep, as what it was until now. It could feel a new change beginning from its center. It began to grow, projecting itself outward, drawing energy from everything around it. From the plants, the trees, the worms, the birds overhead and at the same time, it sensed another voice, something profound inside, a new, distant voice, like a parent calling its child home, the voice calling it from so very far away. Its mind had remained silent, for so long, and now it heard the voice calling it home and something else, something closer. A future investment in this Earth, still so young, but almost ready for a new becoming. To be a new, changed thing, and it was close, a speck of dust, but a speck of some interest.

In a month it would be revivified, and it would become something different, it would be ready, and everything within three or four miles would be dead, it would have absorbed every bit of life force, in an ever-widening circle. It was all in preparation for an arrival and a departure.

Should this new interest become aware, had he known, at this moment, what he would be encountering, he probably would've chosen to take his own life. At the glimmer of this creature, an inkling of its mind or any experience of the kind of power this thing had or any vision of what it was becoming, of what it had once been in its thousands of years of life, this person would have chosen to give up. This new interest would gladly have chosen to take his own life, a bullet to his simple human brain, slicing his wrists, any of the possible ways he could have decided to run from a mind of such power, a thing of such horror, any death would have been the logical escape.

Xuroboros raised a shield around its existence and released a wave of forgetfulness across the world. It was a block, anything on this planet that had known or did know of its existence was now losing those thoughts. As it sent out this wave, spreading across the earth, anything that had known of it, suddenly had no memory of it, creatures who could control the lives of entire towns and cities forgot Xuroborous. Things whose powers were beyond man’s comprehension simply forgot about Xuroborous’ existence. Xuroborous went back to the business of becoming, having been forgotten. Except by her and Mr. Knight, of course, she was too close to the change, and Mr. Knight was his right arm in the world.

CHAPTER TWO

Escape into Hell

ANDY HAD HATED HIS life, as a child; as far back as he could remember, maybe from birth. Now, out of high school, with no prospects or hope for the future, he hated his life even more. Perhaps it was his mother and father and the poor environment, the dysfunctional family. The Hamilton's were the kings of dysfunction. Drinking, drugs and then religion, all new addictions, all as damaging to the family as the last. A QVC addiction to Hummel like figurines, AA meetings, new age enlightenment and bankruptcy, all this had convinced Andy, he was unwanted and unworthy, worth less than a crappy piece of porcelain, shaped badly like a pair of children, doing something cute. By his eighteenth birthday, he was convinced he was worthless, designed for one purpose to suffer and die.

His present job was his proof, his lot in life. As he drove into the driveway, into another level of his own personal hell, in his battered and broken-down Ford Fiesta, with the left wheel clicking and the right rear tire a mini donut spare and that strange tendency to veer right under heavy acceleration. He pulled into the presidents parking spot, fuck him he thought. He needed to park close to the door tonight, he would treat himself tonight, a six-pack. He put the beer down on the floor behind the passenger seat where it was not visible. He tossed an old coat, he had purposely left in the back, on top of the beers. He jumped out of the car, locked the door, no one was gonna search his fucking car, not that anyone was there at the moment and he really didn't care about being caught, he just didn't want to be harassed about his beer. He walked up to the warehouse and slammed hard against the old dented steel door, three hard knocks, Mark came to the door, flabby, grossly overweight having difficulty breathing from climbing the three steps and sliding the door to the warehouse open. They had one thing in common; both were sick and tired of being in this shitty warehouse. The difference was Mark was always exhausted, running from clock punch to clock punch, zone to zone, every twenty minutes. Andy had found a way around what he called the leash, but he would never be stupid enough to pass this trick on to anyone, especially Fat Mark.

As Andy climbed the stairs to the office and wrote his time in on the log, he saw Mark's mom drive in and pick him up. Andy thought about being 29 and living in his Mom's garage, spending every free dime on Star Wars conventions and Prometheus ringtones, and he wondered which life was really worse, Marks or his. He walked away, leaving the front door well secured behind him. As he walked inside, the desolate warehouse, with its flickering fluorescents, covered with dust and cobwebs, all the ones that weren't burned out, flickered or flashed on and then blinked out on some weird florescent magical schedule.

He walked into the warehouse; this one was a repository, a stopping points on the rail line between major food providers and local markets, all but one or two of these warehouses were closed now. It was hard to justify expensive shelf space and deep cold storage when 18 wheelers could deliver directly to Wal- Mart for 1/10 the cost. Most of the small stores had gone under, and the supporting warehouses had gone under right after. This was a dinosaur, just waiting to die, sink into the muck, fossilize and be studied by archaeologists in the far distant future. These fossil hunters would find racks, 20 or 30-foot-tall, filled with various odd items left for storage.

Storage space was sold to people and companies, whoever would rent, whoever needed space to stick their boxes. This one even had a massive subzero freezer filled with fish from dozens of fishermen who had no place to fit their catch. They also had a contract with Isoprene, storing god knows what, stores and various supply chains from the southern areas of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts carried their products. There were 15,000 pounds of unmarked boxes, Andy had never opened a box, but the boxes felt like frozen peas, he had banged and shaken several of the boxes, and they all felt the same, frozen peas. He knew he wasn't supposed to go down any of the isles, hell, he wasn't supposed to go into the freezer at all. He was just supposed to secure the door, punch the clock and walk to the next station.

Andy picked up the ancient CMR. 99 Time~Punch International and took the leather case off the round, 8-pound clock. He pulled his cheap, Chinese, m49 security tool from his pocket, popped the back cover off the clock and headed for the first clock punch station. He put the key that was chained to the wall at the punch station into the matching hole in the clock and watched as the ribbon pushed the station key onto the round paper recording disk. He then advanced the clock by 20 minutes and punched it again. He repeated this process until his shift end time and then headed to the next station to repeat the process. In about 45 minutes he had finished all of his rounds for the night. Free to sleep or search desk drawers or whatever ideas came to mind.

He closed the clock with the tool and threw the strap over your shoulder, looked at the time, 11:22, he had at least 38 minutes before