Dark Allegiance

Chapter 3

THREE

Rona Maguire glared at the man cowering in front of her, disgusted by his cowardice.

They were all cowards, every single one of the people huddled on the ground in front of her, bodies covered with filth from the sewer system she’d found them hiding in. She turned back to the man who had been their unofficial leader.

‘Tell me again how you lot managed to survive, and yet our masters were left behind to be slaughtered by members of the Brimfield Council.’

‘There was no time,’ Evan Johnson said, a quiver in his voice. ‘As soon as Master Callaghan died, and his control of the freaks was broken, the council took their revenge by killing the masters. They came after us, too. We were lucky to escape. The wardens would have killed us for sure, if we hadn’t got away.’

Rona kicked him in the ribs, snarling when all he did was roll over and wait for her to do it again. There was no fight left in him, the debacle with the wardens weakening him to the point of ruin. She’d be better off putting him down, but he was the best source of information she had on what she now faced.

‘How many of you escaped?’

Evan rolled onto his side and got to his knees, one hand holding his side where she had kicked him. His features were racked with pain, but she had no sympathy for him, for any of them.

‘Fifty-seven of us made it out of Brimfield, but we lost eleven of them on the way here when we were attacked by freaks. They couldn’t infect us, but they could still kill us.’

Rona lunged forward, nostrils flaring, causing Evan to flinch as if expecting another blow. ‘What do you mean, they couldn’t infect you?’

‘The Brimfield wardens came up with a cure, and the council gave Master Callaghan enough to vaccinate two dozen people so our scientists could test it. He used it on me and then got one of his pet freaks to bite me.’

He held up his arm and pulled back his sleeve to show ragged teeth marks on his wrist. ‘When I didn’t turn into a freak, he used it on himself and the masters. He kept some for the councillors and used the rest on Karline and some of our people so they could act as guards. Then he used the council’s airship to turn every single human in town into a freak, all of them under his control. Until the wardens cured them all.’

Rona frowned. If Karline had been made immune to the freak virus, why was she not with this lot? Not that she would ever be found cowering in a sewer. ‘Where is my sister?’

Evan sucked in a deep breath before answering. ‘She’s dead. The wardens threw her and Callaghan off the roof of the council building.’ Voice quavering, he described how he had fled the chaotic battle on the rooftop, finding the broken bodies of her sister and the man who had taken control of the Legion on the ground as the wardens used the airship to spread their cure.

Rona turned away, refusing to let him or the others see the tears glistening in her eyes as he detailed the last moments of her beautiful sister’s life. Karline had always been the outgoing one, her personality as vibrant as her flame-coloured hair. She’d been intelligent and strong willed, as well as fiercely loyal to their cause, which is why their grandfather had chosen her to accompany him to the mine compound to compete for the role of successor.

To hear now that Marcus Callaghan had been made heir, only to turn on the masters and then be defeated by the wardens, burned. She would not let them get away with killing her sister.

With justice delivered, the opportunity to bring about the Apocalypse was lost, but that did not mean the plan to rule the masses was dead. She turned back to Evan. ‘Tell me about the cure.’

She listened without saying a word as he talked. When he finally fell silent, she subjected him to a barrage of questions to make sure there was nothing else of use he could tell her.

‘I swear, I don’t know what happened to the half-breed who came up with the cure. She could have died in the battle for all I know. As soon as I could, I rounded up as many of our people as possible and fled. We were lucky to escape as it was.’ His head hung low. ‘We had no food, no water, and the trucks ran out of petrol halfway here. We had to walk the rest of the way, and couldn’t risk entering any of the towns we passed for supplies in case the wardens were warned to look out for us.’

Rona looked over at the group of bedraggled individuals. She and her crew had come across them while completing a check of all the Legion strongholds spread throughout the country. They’d been set up by her ancestors after the prophecy of Gaea’s chosen one began to circulate. They’d had no idea where the physical embodiment of Gaea’s justice would eventually surface, and had made sure they had bases near most of the major towns so they could be ready for the day of judgement.

When that day came, and the world remained as it was, Rona had begun a search of all the strongholds in an effort to discover what had gone wrong.

Now she knew. The plan her ancestors had set in motion over five hundred years ago had failed. It was time for a new plan.

First, she had to take out the trash.

‘Did any of the scientists make it out of Brimfield?’ Rona asked, narrowing her eyes when two men and one woman raised their hands.

‘You three, get up. I need to speak to you in private.’

The three exchanged worried glances, but they were too weak and cowed to do anything but obey. Her top lip curled into a sneer as they got to their feet and stumbled to the door.

Once they were outside, Rona nodded toward her second-in-command, Richard Carter, using hand signals to tell him what she wanted done. Then she stepped outside, untroubled by the screams that filled the shed or the horrified looks on the faces of the three whose lives she had spared. She had a use for them.

As for the others, they were all unworthy.

For what was to come, only the strongest could be allowed to take part.