FALCON: Resistance (KBS Next Generation Book 1) Read online

  FALCON: Resistance

  Title Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Chapter Twelve

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Falcon

  RESISTANCE

  Knights of Black Swan NEXT GENERATION

  Book 1

  Victoria Danann

  Copyright 2016 Victoria Danann

  Published by 7th House Publishing

  Imprint of Andromeda LLC

  Read more about this author and upcoming works at VictoriaDanann.com

  PROLOGUE from Gathering Storm

  “At the direction of The Council, for the first time in Black Swan history, two trainees are being cited for bravery and the medal they are receiving is the Solomon Nemamiah Medal of Honor.”

  Barrock came forward with two medallions attached to large loops of wide green and black striped satin ribbon. He handed them to Sir Fennimore.

  “Rolfe Wakenmann.” He looked at Elora. She motioned him toward Fenn. Wakey bent down so that Fennimore could loop the medal over his head. Wakey said thank you, immediately grasping the medal to look at it as he stood. “Do you have anything to say to the assembly of knights?”

  Still holding his medal, Wakey looked the crowd over. He grinned, looking a little goofy, and said, “Cool,” which prompted a round of good-natured laughter.

  “Kristoph Falcon.” For a moment it looked like Kris was glued to the flagstone floor. Elora leaned over and whispered, “Kris. Go get your medal from Sir Fennimore.”

  The hazy look in Kris’s eyes cleared a little. He walked toward Fenn woodenly and bent down to accept his medal. Like Wakey, he was compelled to grip the precious round seal and hold it so that he could look at it up close.

  “Kris, would you like to say something to the assembly of knights?”

  Kris desperately wanted to say something memorable. He would have loved it. At that moment he would have sold his soul for spontaneous eloquence.

  In the blink of an eye his experience unfolded and played on his heart like it was an instrument ill-used or seldom used.

  Kris was the second son in a family of three boys. His older brother was the golden child who could do no wrong. Beautiful, talented, smart, athletic, and popular. Kris’s parents were so busy taking pride in the accomplishments of his older brother that there wasn’t much left to give anyone else. What was left went to Kris’s younger brother.

  As his childhood unfolded, Kristoph was like a plant without water. He longed for attention and recognition. As his developmental years went by and neither were directed his way, that need was replaced by anger-fueled attitude. Black Swan had given him a way to channel that anger into something that might be productive, even precious, someday.

  In short, public recognition was utterly alien to Kris Falcon. It was utterly alien and utterly overwhelming. Truthfully, standing in the middle of the Chamber, with the eyes of so many Black Swan knights and all his peers trained on him, waiting for him to speak, could have been his worst nightmare. And he could not have been more unprepared to deal with attention on that scale.

  The Chamber was quiet as a tomb while everyone waited to see how the boy would answer Elora’s question. He wasn’t spontaneous and easygoing like Wakey, but he wanted to express what the honor meant to him in some way.

  “I…”

  All present looked on as Kris Falcon tried to wade through the depth of his emotion and find voice and words. It was a battle he ultimately lost. His chin trembled slightly and his eyes grew red-rimmed. In a moment suspended in time, a moment of shared empathy, everyone involuntarily held breath, waiting for the inevitable. When tears that couldn’t be held back spilled out of his eyes, the entire class of trainees poured out of the risers, jumping the rope or going under. They ran forward and smothered him in a pile-on of a group hug accompanied by quiet words of support and congratulations.

  In the rows above, the seasoned knights who bore witness – some of them legends - looked at each other with smiles, nods, winks, and also pride, as if to say, “Yep. That’s what it’s all about.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Yorkshire 1379

  Jaxon Kell was born the year before Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, on a farm near the village of Catterick, which had been built on top of a Roman fortification named Cataractonium. His family escaped the horrors of the Black Death that had killed half the population. In fact, the natural immunities that contributed to the family’s survival may have also been the critical factor that saved Jax from the usual fate of those infected with the vampire virus.

  One early fall morning his father gave him a pouch with enough coins to buy a new bull. The previous bull had been grazing too close to the edge of the forest and had been bitten on the soft part of his nose by an adder. It wasn’t much of a loss for the farm because the bull was old and probably wouldn’t have survived more than two more winters anyway.

  Jaxon had just turned twenty when he discovered the dead bull. The animal was hardly a pet and yet he felt sad, maybe because the bull had been a farm fixture for the entirety of his young life. It wasn’t that Jaxon had never been exposed to death. He’d learned to crack a chicken’s neck for his mother by the time he was five.

  He had no explanation as to why the bull’s death struck him as different, but seeing the former symbol of virility lying on his side with legs stiff as a board, Jaxon became very certain of one thing; death should be avoided for as long as possible.

  The last thing Jaxon’s father said to him, after giving instructions to buy a short-horned bull with a spotted hide and a straight back, one that had seen no fewer than eight seasons and less than sixteen, was, “And come home with a wife while ye’re at it. Ye’re overdue.”

  Jaxon turned away with a scowl, trying to hide his displeasure because he was an agreeable person, not inclined to argue for argument’s sake.

  So he set out walking southeast on the old Roman road that ran the length of the Danelaw, some thirty miles to York. With his youth and long legs, he knew he could easily do it in a day and hire a bed to sleep at one of several inns before nightfall.

  He hadn’t given much thought to getting a wife until he was ordered to do so. Probably because he wasn’t sure that was what he wanted. But it was what people did. Farm work required lots of hands, the more the better, the younger the better. So as he started south toward York, he was thinking about what sort of girl he’d choose.

  His father was descended from the Northmen who had settled Jorvik, or York as it became known in modern times, but his mother was descended from Picts. She was fine-boned with black eyes and a look that caused the more superstitious locals to think she practiced magical mischief.

  Jaxon expressed both heritages in his looks. He was tall and blonde like his father, but his build was leaner and tighter, his musculature more finely cut. He had replicas of his mother’s black eyes that were other-worldly and hypnotic. Her piercing look could transfix a person and cause them to instantly forget what they’d been thinking a moment before. She had a reputation for being able to freeze a person’s tongue in the middle of speech, but that was a rumor started by the ignorant descendants of Scandinavians who simply didn’t care for the pixie-like look of the woman.

  He wasn’t so unsophisticated as to not be aware of his appeal to the opp
osite sex. Catterick was a village, not a town, but there were enough women around for him to glean that he got more than his share of longing looks. Perhaps it was the way his fair hair fell over his brow, giving him a boyish look of innocence. Perhaps it was the contrast between that look of guilelessness and the gleam in his black warlock eyes. Perhaps it was his smile that seemed shy.

  Whatever the reason, he’d been receiving impromptu offers of tumbles from maids and wives alike since he’d turned fourteen and he’d taken advantage of his share.

  He thought about it until mid-morning. He broke off part of the half loaf of bread his mother had sent with him and ate as he walked. It was a nice day with no rain and soon he forgot all about what kind of qualities he might look for in a wife. Instead his thoughts turned to seeking out bawdy taverns where he might learn limericks and how to distinguish a decent ale from brine.

  It was mid-afternoon when Jaxon stepped onto the cobblestone streets of York. He stopped to marvel at York Minster. Construction was still in progress, but it was a sight he wouldn’t forget. He continued until he came to the Goose and Acre Inn. He paid for a room and asked the way to the stockyards, planning to set out first thing the next morning in search of a bull and a bride. Which came first depended entirely on the order fate chose to present.

  Two days later, Jaxon Kell had bought a bull, searched for a bride, and become a vampire.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Kristoph Falcon was one of only a handful of trainees who had ever been assigned to a Jefferson Unit team right after graduation. Not only that, but all four of them were in the same graduating class. Normally trainees would spend years with seasoned knights before being given the responsibility of team patrol, but two factors had pushed them into early service.

  First, they were shorthanded. Too many vampire. Not enough knights.

  Second, three of the four members of K Team, so dubbed by Rammel Hawking because they were ‘kids’, had highly unusual qualifications. They had participated in a spontaneous, and legendary, run down of two vampire in Manhattan while they were still trainees and unarmed.

  If that wasn’t remarkable enough, two of them, Falcon and Wakenmann, had been decorated for uncommon valor, while they were still trainees, when J.U. had been attacked by aliens. The two of them were the only prospective knights in the long and illustrious history of the centuries-old Order of the Black Swan to earn medals.

  This undoubtedly odd twist of fate was due partly to the fact that he and Wakenmann had learned to fly whisters as a punishment for sneaking off grounds without permission. Glendennon Catch, the guy who’d conceived and executed that ‘punishment’, had been just a couple of years older than they were at the time. He was currently serving as sovereign of Jefferson Unit. It seemed Jefferson Unit was harvesting a very precocious crop.

  In his heart Falcon had been a little embarrassed to accept a medal for doing what needed to be done. He hadn’t considered that there was an option other than walking straight into a hail of fire. So far as he was concerned, the fuckers were invading his home and threatening the lives of people he cared about, including the teacher who’d been more nurturing than his own mother had ever cared to be.

  Falcon’s unit, K Team, consisted of his partner, Rolfe Wakenmann, aka Wakey, Sinclair Harvest, aka Sin, and Kellan Chorzak, aka Spaz. Though in the present day, Zak wasn’t likely to be called ‘Spaz’ by anyone other than his teammates. As it turned out, the long limbs and awkwardness that had earned him the nickname of ‘Spaz’ as a young teen were a harbinger of masculine blossoming into a six-foot-four frame that was big-boned enough to support a truly impressive musculature.

  The four of them had grown up together and knew each other well enough to think they might eventually achieve the elusive ‘team telepathy’ that had been reported by a few quartets over the centuries.

  Falcon had lived half his life on the J.U. premises and barely had a conception of ‘home’ that didn’t revolve around the Hub. He had a family in the sense of people who shared DNA, but they didn’t feel as much like family as the teammates who wouldn’t hesitate to die in his place if necessary. How did he know that? Because they’d proved it. Over and over and over again.

  There was nothing he wouldn’t do for them.

  There was nothing they wouldn’t do for him.

  He didn’t think of his vocation as a job. He knew he was doing the most important work in the world, keeping an unsuspecting population safe from the real monsters that prowled through the shadows of cities at night.

  The year before he’d let an infatuation override good sense and had gone AWOL, chasing after a girl who hadn’t returned his affection. After she’d been turned into a vampire. As if there was some way to bring her back from that.

  Black Swan had given him a pass on the grounds of temporary insanity. They hadn’t called it that, of course, but they might as well have. He considered himself lucky that they let him return to duty after a time, and didn’t hold it against him in any way perceivable.

  The Order of the Black Swan was an old organization, too old to dismiss the importance of the female sex. Though the trainees were housed and educated in facilities where the only women were Black Swan staffers, great care was taken to teach the young gentlemen interpersonal skills. The boys called it “pick up” class, but of course, it was much more.

  Black Swan’s version of sex ed went much further than anatomy. In addition to teaching strict precautions about careful contraception habits, the boys studied insights into feminine behavior and expectations that would certainly benefit most of the male population of the world. That was supplemented with summer camps.

  The trainees were sent to six weeks of coed camp each year after evaluating their personal interests. Some went to music camp. Some went to foreign language camp. Some went to general camps. But all went to camps where they would mingle with the general population.

  The girls they encountered were attracted to their healthy looks and impressed by their self-confidence and good manners.

  When asked where they went to school, they simply said private school in New Jersey. If pressed, they would say it was a small school named Jefferson Academy.

  As part of the master plan, the boys invariably experienced flirtations, or summer romances, or hookups with the opposite sex.

  Falcon had been head-over-heels invested in an infatuation that wasn’t mutual. When the object of his affection turned vampire and fell for somebody else, it was a major mind fuck. Hard to tell whether that was mostly because of the turning-vampire thing or the falling-for-somebody-else thing. Either way, the result was that he’d developed an aversion to women as a compensatory tactic for emotional health and self-preservation.

  Falcon and the other three members of his team had been fortunate enough to train in the shadows of the legendary B Team and even know them personally. B Team had thought they’d made it out of the job alive. If anybody deserved to live to retirement and enjoy it, it was those guys, gods bless them. Well, those three guys and the woman who was the first and only female knight to date.

  The problem was that the antidote that was supposed to cure the vampire virus had caused a mutation that resulted in a surge of a new and even more resilient strain. Like the domino effect, that had created an explosion in the vampire population along with a rise in the death tally of women of child-bearing age. Crisis wasn’t nearly an intense enough noun to describe the potential catastrophe.

  A generation of young men of typical dating age were being turned. A generation of young women of typical dating age were being killed in hideous ways, drained dry by formerly nice boys whose personalities were displaced when they’d been possessed by a relentless virus.

  The New York City Council had invoked its authority to declare an emergency curfew between the hours of midnight and six for people between the ages of fifteen and forty, but enforcement was impossible for a population that had grown up in the “city that never sleeps”. All night businesses weren�
��t going to close their doors and sustain a possibly fatal loss of income and the charter didn’t give the City Council authority to take such measures even if they’d been able to agree on it. Young people who worked in those businesses couldn’t afford to stay home. Then there was a sizable number of the population who thought that, if everyone ignored the curfew, it would be unenforceable.

  They were right.

  The only way age could be proven was to stop people on the street and look at identification. Certainly personnel resources fell far short of that.

  If young people wanted to take their lives into their own hands, which of course, was exactly what young people seemed to want to do, city government was powerless to save them from themselves. End result? The streets were a little quieter and more deserted during the early morning hours, but not much. That meant that all able-bodied, conscientious knights and knights emeritus were needed.

  As Glen put it, “All hands on deck.”

  Of course it was still a choice. Since Ram and Elora had three children to consider, they fought about it for days. He said he couldn’t stay home with the world about to go to hel in a bike basket. She said he wasn’t going without her.

  In the end she won the argument by reminding him that she was the only person in the history of Black Swan annals who had been bitten, infected, and recovered. To seal the deal, she also reminded him that her strength and speed gave her advantages over both vampire and other knights.

  “If you’re going, I’m going,” she said. “Our children are not going to be left fatherless.” And with that they moved back into the only family-sized apartment at Jefferson Unit. Again.

  Katrina threatened to divorce Kay if he returned to duty. He pulled her into his lap and said, “Look at it this way, sweetness. They don’t stand for softening around the middle. I’ll have to rebuild that six pack you like so much.” He nuzzled her neck and grinned when that brought on a shiver.