Episode 23

When Silverbullet rescued her lover, Rose DeVega, it was because the former was heading for the Sin City Arena and the latter was running from the arena. At the time, the only other place she'd heard was forcibly converted into a blood camp by the Vampire Empire/Wolf Pack was the Sin City Amphitheater. And after barely three hours of sleep, Lily Sloan was awakened by an impatient Iqu at noon in order to sneak through the guarded streets to get there. If it was, in fact, a blood camp, trucks delivering bags of human blood and obese bodies drained of said blood, would be loaded and headed for the front line‹which is wherever there's any prolonged armed resistance to the new order.

Since Y2K was everything it was said to have been, electrical power has been fleeting and fluctuating at best, and since the empire has kept humanity occupied (to say the least), no one has had the chance to operate the electrically run gas stations to (re)fuel vehicles‹except the "Leeches." Those who are Aryan-appearing enough to be picked by the Nazi vampire officers to fetch or deliver whatever in exchange for the chance to be bitten and turned to the dark side are the only humans driving anything at all during this dire time.

Lily Sloan and Iqu briefed each other on their respective shapeshifting as they were leaving the holy ground Saint Michael's provided. Once back in the alley where Iqu telepathically made his true self known to her (and safely away from prying eyes of those that holy ground was protecting), he alternated between changing into a small cat for speed and a large spider for stealth while en route. Lily changed into Silverbullet, and then changed entirely into liquid silver, which began slithering along the filthy (and occasionally bloody) street like a puddle moving with a mind of its own. Within this puddle's mind, it occurred to her how disgusting it was to be spending that long on the dirty ground. But this morphing technique did allow her to keep up with Iqu while remaining unseen by either the heavily armed patrols of white supremacist weremen (during the day‹and nights of the crescent moon) or their vampire masters in bulky solar suits that shield against daylight but inhibit any vampiric abilities.

Luckily for them, the daytime shift of the Vampire Empire/Wolf Pack was more concerned with fattening up the humans who were still running free with free food and keeping them from amassing in public. This night, Sunday, January 2, 2000, would be the last night of the full moon for a month. And while the vampires' lupine cannon fodder would still exhibit some wolven characteristics after dark until the crescent moon (and therefore, still be a force to be reckoned with in the field), the fact is, unless their leader, Colonel Kruger, can make every night have a full moon by using the technology that Iqu's race held at Base 11, the humans might find a way to fight back.

Once they reached the amphitheater, Silverbullet flowed upwards into bipedal form and Iqu did the same while both hiding behind a parked minivan that looked to be abandonned. "I wish I knew how to 'hotwire' a car," Silverbullet whispered. "I could fill the ignition slot with liquid silver, solidify, and turn the motor over myself, but then I'd have to drive, and I don't know how to get to Base 11."

"It's best we get one of their trucks instead of a civilian's that'll be easily noticed," Iqu said. "Besides, it's best if I'm seen driving." Iqu resumed the form he had when they first met‹a fiftysomething Aryan male, "just in case we're stopped."

From where they were, Silverbullet could see the occasional overweight human being dragged into the amphitheater kicking and screaming by one of the weremen. When she wondered to herself whether weremen ate human flesh as their werewolf selves do, Silverbullet became disgusted with herself. Not with the mental image in her mind's eye of supernatural cannibalism, but with how she could waste time theorizing about such things while these obese men were herded like cattle before her eyes. Iqu seems pretty anxious to get back to the base, Silverbullet thought, but stopping whatever Kruger's planning can wait just long enough for me to liberate this camp. I can have my cake and eat it too, and even if they delay us trying to stop us, we have HOURS before sundown...

Running from their hiding place, Silverbullet overconfidently leapt into action, assuming 6-foot, 200-pound weremen were nothing compared to the 7-foot, 500-pound werewolves she thought herself used to by this point. When Iqu read her mind to see what she had in mind, he screamed, "Nooo!" What the alien didn't want to burden the humans with was the knowledge that if Colonel Kruger doesn't properly access a dimensional portal to a world with a view of a perpetual full moon, this dimension could be instantly destroyed.

TO BE CONTINUED