A sequel to the Gun Princess Royale. Yanked off the streets of New Angeles by the tenebrous Pantheon organisation, and gifted with a deadly avatar known as a Diva, Nikola 'Sola' Raynar is a Lanfear - a huntress of Bloodliners and Wolvren. When she isn't hunting down the denizens of the night, she's busy finding ways to build up her nest egg for the day of her retirement from Pantheon. But when her rampant greed carries her a little too far, she finds herself in a mess that wasn't entirely of her own making. And things only get worse when the one who recruited her, the Goddess Aphrodite, decides to use Nikola to draw an enemy of Pantheon's out of the darkness and into the light.

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Terminology.

Bloodliner (Vampire) – humans possessing the Blood Filial symbiote in their bodies; gifted with extraordinary strength, heightened senses, and preternatural healing; drink the blood of other humans when their bodies are incapable of meeting the nutritional requirements of the symbiote.

Wolvren (Werewolf) – possible non-terrestrial species of unknown origin; human in appearance; a minority possess the ability to transmogrify into a bestial form; believed to be the source of the Werewolf myth.

Fury – artificial humanoid lifeform; teenage female appearance; combat oriented; excels in melee warfare; controlled by a human master referred to as an Aventis.

Aventis – human female; invariably young in appearance; operator of a designated Fury; affiliated with the Pantheon organization.

Pantheon – enigmatic collective in existence since before antiquity; responsible for the creation of Aventis and Furies; ruled by eleven individuals referring to themselves as the gods of Olympus; self-appointed guardians of the peace between Bloodliners and Wolvren.

Juicer – Aventis slang for Vampire.

Pup – Aventis slang for Wolvren.

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Reflections – I.

Have you ever met a Vampire?

Chances are you have…and you didn’t know it.

You may have walked right by one…and they by you.

You may have crossed paths on the street, traded seats on the bus, pushed and shoved each other on or off the train, tousled with one during a fire sale at the mall, or sat beside them in class.

You could have done all this, and more, while oblivious to the truth.

Why?

Because Vampires look no different from you and I, and many of them live lives no different from ours. They walk their dogs, mow their lawns, pay their taxes, chip in at the local community center, partake in union rallies, demand better pay and working conditions, indulge in illicit drugs, and dance the night away under intense psychedelic lightshows.

Vampires are just like you.

They could be your neighbor, or the quiet loner who helps old ladies across the street, or the matronly lady serving at the school canteen, or your childhood friend.

They could also be the girl – or boy – you have a crush on at school.

Thus, except for a vast minority of their kind, Vampires are impossible to distinguish from regular humans.

They walk the same, smell the same, talk the same.

They don’t fear sunlight any more than you do.

They have reflections, cast shadows, take showers, bubble baths, jump across running water, eat garlic bread along with their pizzas, and the devout faithfully attend Mass on Sunday morning.

Given all this, you must be asking yourself, can they be considered Vampires?

The answer is Yes.

And to the question of ‘is there anything to fear from them?’ the answer is again…Yes.

As the saying goes, it may walk like a dog, smell like a dog, and bark like a dog…but it’s not a dog.

Vampires are stronger and faster than regular humans.

A teenage Vampire girl can easily overcome a burly brawler, and an elderly Vampire can singlehandedly subdue the Bingo Brigade on game night.

And just like the lore says, Vampires possess inhuman abilities. They can influence human minds and they drink human blood to make themselves stronger.

That said, beyond the physical aspects, why fear Vampires?

If everyone is nice to each other then there are no problems. Right?

The sad truth is that humans and Vampires are not always nice to each other, and when that happens humans invariably find themselves on the losing end.

Thus, are Vampires inherently dangerous? Most assuredly.

Yet Vampires are not the most dangerous of creatures out there.

They may be hard to kill, but they bleed when cut and die when stabbed through the heart…well, most of them do…and while they are blessed with long lifespans, they are not immortal. And just like humans dread the dark, so too Vampires have a reason to fear things that bump and slash their way through the night.

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There are three elements to the Aventis-Fury system.
There is the Aventis herself, the Cradle that supports her, and the Fury that is the instrument of her will.
The Aventis is a human girl with an Anima Crystal – a Soul Gem – embedded in her body that bonds her to her Fury who also possesses a crystal of her own.
The Cradle is a marvel of technology. Hiding in a pocket of folded space, the Cradle goes where the Aventis goes, yet is undetectable to anyone but the Aventis and other girls like her.
Nestled within is the Fury, an unnatural creature with the appearance of a young woman. No two Furies are alike thus their abilities, skills, and strength vary. However, there is a commonality between them. They can shift from place to place, a process akin to teleporting between short distances. They are sword bearers or spear wielders, though some possess ballistic weapons. And they can regenerate lost limbs and recover from wounds otherwise fatal to Bloodliners, humans, and Wolvren.
When an Aventis summons her Fury, she exchanges places with her in the Cradle, and utilizes the bond shared between their respective Anima Crystals to control her Fury. In essence, the crystals allow an Aventis to become the Fury, imbuing her with a consciousness, a will, and a purpose. Yet, while it is the Aventis that gives life to her Fury, sometimes the Fury gives a little something back.

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“Have you heard of the Remnant Fiestas?”

Puzzled, I blinked at the sudden question and stopped chewing the savory chunk of hamburger in my mouth, then slowly turned to eye the teenage girl standing beside me.

“Heard of what?” I asked her around the aforementioned mouthful of food.

We were two girls sheltering from the rain under an awning that covered a stall selling hamburgers, hotdogs, shish kabobs, and other assorted hot food in a crowded marketplace occupying a narrow plaza between megascrapers. We had been lucky enough to grab some space under the awning after making our purchases because a couple of other customers had moved on to other haunts.

The girl, Zenovia, licked the sauce off her fingertips before resuming to feast on her burger with small bites.

I swallowed what I was eating and waited for her to do the same before asking again, “Heard of what?”

Zenovia gently waved her burger at me. “These rats are premium quality.”

Ah, yes.

It was just like her to answer me with a non sequitur.

With a sigh, I glanced down at my rat burger.

Premium quality, indeed.

In all honesty, it was the best damn meat I’d eaten in weeks.

It tasted like real beef rather than the artificially grown kind.

Where the Hell had these rodents come from?

While I was wondering that, Zenovia approached the stall’s operators – two young men and a young woman sweating it out behind the hot plates. They were a family, and apparently had a long tradition of serving here in the market and others like it.

Zenovia called out to the young woman in a melodious voice, “Where are these from?”

Ah, yes indeed.

Zenovia and I were so like minded on many occasions that it wasn’t surprising to hear her ask them what I happened to be wondering at the time.

The girl took a moment to realize what was being asked, then shrugged. “Let me ask.”

She turned to her brothers and repeated Zen’s question.

One of them replied without pausing. “District 14, Block 12—no, I think it’s Block 13. Someone’s set up a colony of them over in the sub levels of the old Culver Building.”

He flipped a burger paddy over, the meat sizzling on the hot plate, the fatty oil burning away, the smell mingling with that of the metallic scent of the falling downpour…among other things.

“Culver Building?” Zenovia asked, giving her burger a studious look.

“Yeah, they’re breeding them fat and juicy.”

“How fat and juicy?”

“About ten to fifteen pounds of prime rodent.”

“Hmm….”

Zenovia moved away from the stall, choosing not to distract the trio from their business of making a living.

I wondered what she was thinking.

Part of me was indeed curious to know where the rat came from. Another part of me wondered if something that tasted this good was safe to eat.

That said, if I felt ill afterwards, I could always hop into my Cradle and have it flush out the impurities in my body.

“Culver Building,” Zenovia muttered to herself, before taking another bite out of her burger.

“What’s so important about that?”

She shrugged. “I heard a rumor that a clan of Wolvren had gone into business over there.”

“The rat business?”

“I guess.” She shrugged again. “Well, good business is where you find it.”

“How true.”

I wasn’t going to deny that.

Glancing up at the soaring skyscrapers – no, the megascrapers – most of which had their top floors lost to the low hanging rain clouds, I was reminded of how big business loomed over me day-in and day-out.

It made me miserable, so I lowered my gaze back down to the marketplace, then wrinkled my nose.

The smell of food, the rain, and that of the crowd trundling past us through the densely packed plaza had mingled into an odd concoction that was sweet, sour, and fetid. Being a Lanfear, my olfactory sense was much stronger than a human’s, though not on par with that of a dog, but sufficient to make me regret trying to eat in a place like this. Unfortunately, this happened to be one of the best stalls in the district. And it was also a way for Zenovia and I to catch up on gossip that we didn’t want to share wirelessly.

Ignoring the surrounding aroma as best I could, I focused on finishing off the burger while keeping an eye on Zenovia, but a worrying thought crossed my mind.

Turning slightly toward her, I frowned weakly while asking, “Are you planning on giving them trouble?”

Zenovia looked confused. “What?”

“You’re not going to shake them down for money, are you?”

“Who?”

“Those Wolvren in the rat business.”

Zenovia considered the question for a short while. “Nope. This is certainly the best meat I’ve had in ages. No reason to ruin a good business.”

She threw in a shrug for good measure.

A faint sense of relief trickled through me, washing away the subtle unease I’d been harboring while waiting for her answer.

“Besides,” she continued, “District 14 is not my turf.”

It most certainly was not.

I spent a few moments trying to remember which Aventis was assigned to watch over that part of the city.

Is it Zhasmin or Monique?

With an inward shrug, I told myself the answer would come to me later.

I was about to take another bite out of my dinner when I abruptly remembered what Zenovia had asked me earlier. “By the way, what did you mean by the Remnant Fiestas?”

She continued eating as though she hadn’t heard me, but seconds later, Zenovia peered up at the greyish sky drenching us with rain, and her voice was quiet, almost lost in the crowd.

“It’s something I’ve been hearing about lately….”

I kept my expression neutral. “And what have you been hearing?”

“The phrase or term, Remnant Fiestas. I don’t know what it means, but I’ve been hearing it on the grapevine.” She cocked her head slightly. “It’s like a whisper in the static you get when a channel goes off air. A voice that’s either there or not there. Do you know what I mean?”

“No, since channels don’t go off air anymore.”

Zenovia laced her conversations with analogies from a bygone era, and some of her manner of speaking had rubbed off onto me.

She shrugged, dismissing my attempt to correct her. “You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do. But don’t forget that I’m not remotely as old as you are.”

I was only nineteen, though now I looked more like sixteen year old jailbait. However, despite her teenage appearance, Zen was pushing a hundred. It was no wonder she remembered those bygone days before the Internet and its successor, the CyWeb. She probably remembered a time before cell phones and augmented reality.

I wondered if she ever grew nostalgic for the Good Old Days?

Then I realized my thoughts were straying, and I needed to bring them back on track.

“So do you know what it means?”

“What does what mean?”

“The Remnant Fiestas,” I reminded her. “Do you know what it means?”

“Oh….” She narrowed her eyes at something in the distance. “That’s the problem. I have no idea. But I heard it whispered when I was listening in to the city chatter.”

I frowned inwardly as faint unease slithered around in my chest.

Listening in to the city chatter was something that could be interpreted differently depending on one’s circumstances. For an Aventis like Zenovia – and a Lanfear like me – its meaning could be narrowed down to the following.

First, it meant keeping your ear to the ground. Not literally, but proverbially. Just listening to people talk, listening to the crowds, reading the gossip on the CyWeb, and wrangling news out of our informants. More or less what a gumshoe detective might have done in the old days, without the part where he trawled the CyWeb for information.

Second, it meant roaming the city the way only an Aventis or Lanfear could, by using our Divas or Furies to traverse the skyline while accompanied by a recon bot that eavesdropped on the electronic and photronic chatter happening within the buildings. In short, the bots would tap into the building’s communication network and spy on the occupants, effectively listening in on them without their knowledge or consent.

It wasn’t that uncommon or surprising a thing to do.

The city authorities did it all the time.

However, we slaves – err, employees – of Pantheon had to do it better, which was why we customized our bots with both legal and illegal components, essentially anything that gave us an edge on the authorities. It was also a means to and end, allowing us to carry out our duties by spying on the city’s sixty million inhabitants and sniffing out trouble with the Vampires and Wolvren, and dealing with it too.

The way the self-proclaimed gods of Pantheon pitched it, we Lanfears – and the lesser Aventis – were like firefighters putting out spot fires before they turned into blazing infernos that could plunge the city into chaos.

Zenovia swallowed the last of her burger and licked her fingers dry.

I frowned at her lack of etiquette, preferring to wipe my fingers clean using a wet tissue I carried with me. After folding it up, I returned the tissue to a back pocket of my black trousers and found a hole there.

Damn it.

I would need to buy a new pair to replace these old ones.

Giving the marketplace a look, I wondered if I could find a seller here that had something in my size.

Nah, worry about it later.

Truthfully, I had an entire wardrobe stored away in my Diva’s Cradle.

There was no need to spend my hard earned cash on another pair of pants.

“Hey, Sola? You listening to me?”

I blinked sharply and looked at Zen who was waving a hand before my eyes. “No, not at all.”

“I thought so.” She wrinkled her nose at me. “You weren’t lost in another one of your girl-on-girl fantasies about me?”

I pursed my lips for a long, thoughtful moment. “Perhaps.”

She silently sighed. “Anyway, as I was saying, I’ve got a new job for the month.”

“What about the Remnant Fiestas?”

She scowled, annoyed. “Forget about the Fiestas.”

“As you wish….” I took a quick breath of the less than pleasant air surrounding us. “So what’s the job?”

“Executive Protection.”

“Oh, you’re a glorified bouncer.”

She scowled at me again. “That’s not right and you know it.”

I shrugged. “True.”

Indeed, I was being arrogantly dismissive of the profession, but I didn’t care. “So, whose butt are you protecting?”

Zenovia frowned at me in reproach, but then pressed on. “A rich Juicer and his family need to be looked after.”

“Why?”

“He’s a Primogen Legate.”

The surprise I showed masked the concern that sparked within me. “That’s pretty high up the pecking order.”

“And he rose up the ranks pretty quickly too. And made some enemies along the way.”

“So why do they need an Aventis and her Fury to protect them? Surely he has a small army of private security to keep him safe.”

Zenovia grimaced faintly, then regarded me sidelong. “You’d think that, right?”

Puzzled, I found myself staring back at her, wondering what it was she was implying.

Was she accusing me of something or was she being critical of my way of thinking?

Before I could ask her, Zenovia perked up or rather she seemed to resign herself to some unknown and inevitable fate.

I grew concerned as well as uneasy, yet unexpectedly failed to voice it.

I wasn’t shy about airing my thoughts to Zen, so why was I having trouble admitting that I was worried about her.

Zenovia stretched her arms and bent her body, working the kinks out of it, before peeking out from under the awning keeping the rain off our heads.

“I hate summers,” she murmured, then surprised me when she gave me a playful look. “Stay safe, Sola.”

With those words, she stepped out from under the stall’s awning, and rushed into the marketplace. Within seconds, she’d disappeared into the crowd of people moving like a strong current between the scores upon scores of market stalls. Yet I was able to track her progress by the aura of her lifeforce, a mixture of gold and emerald light surrounding her body. It was distinct from the solely golden lifeforce that radiated from human beings, different from the bluish light that silhouetted Vampires, or the reddish glow that emanated from the Wolvren.

It was by this light that my gaze followed Zenovia Alcazar until she vanished into a subway entrance at a distant corner of the overcrowded plaza.

For a while later, I stood under the awning, staring at the crowd though not looking at them, unable to shake off the impression that my dear friend and sister-in-arms had tripped a really bad flag.