The Bottom Rung Read online

  The Bottom Rung

  Sam Hall

  To Matt,

  for your advice, support and love.

  To my grandmother,

  who’s fairly cynical view of world politics influenced mine. She believed in both hope and calling governments out on their crap.

  Contents

  Author Note

  Trigger Warning

  1. Hesse

  2. Lethe

  3. Lethe

  4. Rohan

  5. Lethe

  6. Lethe

  7. Lethe

  8. Hesse

  9. Lethe

  10. Nathaniel

  11. Lethe

  12. Lethe

  13. Lethe

  14. Hesse

  15. Lethe

  16. Lethe

  17. Lethe

  18. Lethe

  19. Hesse

  20. Lethe

  21. Hesse

  22. Lethe

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Description

  I may have been born in the Quarter, but I refuse to die here.

  I live in the Quarter, the societal cage where all of Cremorne’s paranormals have been locked up, but I’m neither vampire, werewolf nor witch. I’m the lowest of the low, doomed to be one of two things: junkie or vampire’s pet.

  Desperate to escape, I’ll do whatever it takes to get out, to get all of us out, even if that means shaking my country and the gods themselves to the core to restore the balance. I’m collecting allies so I can start a revolution and finding power my kind would never dream of, but this game has been in play for a lot longer than I’ve been breathing and there’s a chance I’m just another pawn.

  That’s OK, because I am determined to win.

  The Bottom Ring

  The Bottom Rung © Sam Hall 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except for in the case of brief quotations for the use in critical articles or reviews.

  Edited by Chanderella Editing

  Cover art and design © Jacqueline Sweet

  The characters and events depicted in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Created with Vellum

  Author Note

  This book is written in Australian English, which is a weird lovechild of British and American English. We tend to spell things the way the Brits do (expect a lot more u’s), yet also use American slang and swear more than both combined.

  While many people have gone over this book, trying to find all the typos and other mistakes, they just keep on popping up like bloody rabbits. If you spot one, don’t report it to Amazon, drop me an email at the below address so I can fix the issue.

  [email protected]

  Trigger Warning

  This book deals with an imaginary scenario where systemic, institutional violence is committed against whole groups of people, so pretty much every trigger you can think about applies here.

  Drug use is prevalent, there are some gritty descriptions of life dealing with poverty, acts of violence are perpetrated against men and women, including pregnant women. The aftermath of some battle scenes was described in detail and there are several references, but not depictions of child abuse, both physical and sexual. The main antagonist is psychopathic and completely without compassion. Overwhelmingly, the series is supposed to be about ways people can rise up against oppression, but to establish a context, the direness of the situation is outlined.

  It deals extensively with prejudice, discrimination and sexism.

  None of this has been included for titillation or to artificially create drama, instead it’s supposed to be a means to examine systemic privilege and oppression.

  1

  Hesse

  Hesse Corp building

  Meridian City

  The assistant walked down the darkened hallway, past the many tasteful, but not especially effective light fittings on the walls, towards the CEO’s door. She stopped just before reaching it, pausing to take a deep breath, before she reordered the papers in her hand and wiped her sweaty palm on her skirt. She straightened up and raised a closed fist ready to knock, when a voice called out, “Come in.”

  She jerked back, wasting precious time but collected herself quickly. She’d only been in the job for a few weeks, and wouldn’t be for much longer if she couldn’t get it together.

  She pushed the door open. Her eyes were instantly hit by the reddish rays of the dying sun. It seemed odd to her, to enjoy such a huge office with a floor to ceiling view of Meridian City and not turn around to look at it, but as he glanced up, Hesse, CEO of his self-named corporation for over a hundred years, hero of the Revolution, was cast in a halo of light, both blinding and impressing the humble petitioners who dared enter his sanctum.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Sorry sir, the boys down in one of the monitoring stations picked this up, and asked it be brought directly to you.”

  “Very well,” he said, holding out a hand.

  She shuffled over quickly, passing them over. With quick economical movements, he scanned the documents, able to take in what was relevant so rapidly, the assistant wondered if he even read them.

  He passed them back to her, her fingers thankfully closing around them automatically. “Thank you, Miller. There have been some minor tremors at the Ladder of the Gods on Talos. It’s probably just a cat or something. Nothing to worry about. Instruct the monitoring teams to continue sending me any meaningful data, but an email will suffice. No point in wasting your valuable time acting as a messenger service.”

  His smile was sudden and shocking. Miller rarely saw her boss, but on those rare occasions she did, she could see why he was nominated one of the Top 20 Sexiest Bachelors in Meridian for the 83rd year running. His brown eyes twinkled with just the right amount of good humour, his smile bright and shining. She blinked several times, his expression shifting slightly as he noticed her star-struck response.

  “Of course, sir. I’ll alert the teams straight away. Is there anything else?”

  “Make sure the Crown Princess and the Prime Minister are not included in any correspondence on the Ladder. No point in getting her Highness’ hopes up over a feral cat, is there?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I wish for Reunion with the gods as much as any man, but it appears we are not currently worthy. Still, we must be vigilant for any sign.”

  “Yes, sir. Now, did you want me to bring you your evening meal, or place it in the kitchenette for later?”

  His dimples deepened as he shot her a fond look, “In the kitchenette, please. You know just how to look after me, Ms Miller.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, almost dropping a curtsey in front of the man, but managing to catch herself in an ungainly partial crouch. “Right away, sir.”

  “That will be all, Miller,” he said, his voice gentle and reassuring, like being stroked with a velvet glove. She was relieved to be dismissed, to be recognised, and to still have her job.

  2

  Lethe

  Lethe’s flat

  Hybrid Sector

  The Quarter

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  My head jerked up with a start, and for a moment, all I could see was the mouldy peeling wallpaper on my walls and hear the flap of the clear plastic I’d taped to the window that had come free, snapping rhythmically. I shivered, the plastic wasn’t bad at holding in whatever meagre heat I managed to generate when it stayed stuck, but as I reached over to press the tape down again, I could see it wasn’t going to work. I needed to get another rol
l.

  Bang, bang, bang!

  What the fuck is that? I thought and staggered to my feet, adeptly rolling over only where the rusty steel springs had not worked their way through the threadbare covering.

  “Marley!” I called out for my brother as I picked up my sagging door- with its one intact hinge- and shoved it open. “Marley!”

  I ducked my head in the bathroom room and jerked back. The stench coming from the floor indicated he hadn’t made it to the toilet again while he was experiencing yet another involuntary session of cold turkey. I walked to the bathroom with trepidation.

  “Fuck, Marley…” My brother was sprawled out on the broken tiles. The one thing this place had going for it was a working bathroom. That was definitely in the past. The stench and brown liquid slopping against the toilet rim indicated it was backed up again and my brother’s spindly white form was laid out cold on the floor.

  Like me, as well as every other albino, he had hair the colour of pure driven snow, skin pale enough to match the tiles. Unlike me, he was skinny as a wraith. He wasn’t looking so pure right now. He lay in a huge circle of vomit that had seeped into his clothes and hair. I watched his chest with a mix of fear, desperation and guilty hope.

  I edged around the mess, searching the bathroom cabinet for his stash, making sure to avoid the clusters of uncapped hypodermic needles he’d left there. I pulled out a well creased Ziploc bag and saw only the fine yellow residue of the drug left in it, then threw it back.

  I looked down, Marley was so thin, hardly eating nowadays, only interested in fucking and chasing drugs. If his usage didn’t decrease, he’d be dead or drinking stoned kids’ piss within the month. But, sure enough, his thin chest rose and fell, barely.

  Bang, bang, bang!

  I stomped over to the front door. “What!”

  “You sleep in today, love?”

  “Really? That was you?” I said, shaking my head. Two guys filled my doorway and then some. Gavin McIntyre stood closest to the door frame, looking me over with a long, slow inspection. His dark eyes glittered in the dim morning light, a slight smile spreading over his mobile face. Like his brother, he was tall, broad-shouldered and wore the vamp regulation black leather jacket. He was also one of my oldest friends. Fair-haired Bennett with his three-day-old stubble and grey eyes was the other.

  “You gonna invite us in?” Bennet said with a smile. “Boss’ has got a job for you.”

  “You don’t want to come in here. Toilet’s backed up and Marley’s been doing some home decorating again. I’ve got to get to headquarters before doing this job or they won’t pay me, and I need a piss and shower now that Marley’s totalled ours.”

  “Let me sort out the junky prick,” Gavin said, shouldering his way inside. “You can’t keep living like this, Lethe. You pay good money for this shit hole and that piece of crap, who isn’t even your own blood, keeps fucking it up.”

  “We’re not having this argument again, not with a full bladder and no coffee in my hand,” I snapped back.

  “Get your shit,” Bennet said. “We’ll drop by the service station on the way to our place, get you some breakfast as well.”

  “You don’t…”

  “Have to? Need to? 'Course we do. You’re getting as skinny as that predatory little fuck you insist on supporting,” Bennett said. “Grab a change of clothes and let’s get on the road.”

  People on the other side of the Wall that kept humanity safe wouldn’t have thought you could leave the gleaming black beast that was the McIntyres’ ride, idling on the street out in front of my building unlocked, but they’d be wrong. Gavin got into the driver’s seat without a word, a testament to how pissed he was, but when I reached for the rear passenger door, Bennett’s hand closed over mine. His skin felt warm, almost like it had when we were kids. He’d have to had fed this morning, probably from one of my brethren at the Palace.

  The vampires, along with the werewolves, the witches and the albinos, had once ruled Cremorne. Now we lived out our lives penned up in the ruins of old Meridian City, called the Quarter. We’d been deposed during the Revolution two hundred years ago, and were labelled the anomalous, the non-human.

  In the dog eat dog world of the Quarter, there were a lot of kids with no caregivers, so we grew up in the Crèche, a loosely monitored corral of freaks. Marley and I had been there since we were babies, but when Bennett and Gavin turned up, two skinny human boys dumped by their deadbeat mother, they could have been anyone’s meat. Instead, we’d joined forces, survived.

  Bennett looked at me, his mouth only centimetres away from mine, his nostrils flared as he took in my scent. I wouldn’t have thought it was too nice, not having had the opportunity for a shower, but the widening pupils in his steel coloured eyes said otherwise. He licked his lips, the sharp white fangs that descended when he was hungry or horny peeked over the soft fullness. “Enough of the fucking foreplay!” his brother called out. “Get in the car!” If this was the Crèche, he would’ve blushed. Instead, he dropped his eyes and smiled before opening the front with a flourish.

  “Your carriage awaits, milady.”

  I shook my head, there was no point in fighting it. Every damn time they insisted I sit between them, on the bench seat. I slid across the dark vinyl, shaking my head as Gavin’s face transformed into a smile. “Let’s get this show on the road,” he said, revving the engine and laying an arm across the back of the headrest.

  “You can’t come in here and buy a pack of gum, just to use the facilities every day!” Janice, the morning attendant at the service station, said as the door jingled shut.

  “Get the lady a coffee, black, two sugars and one of those breakfast roll things she likes, to go,” Gavin said. He leaned against the counter as Janice rang his order up, watching her simper with a smile, only moving away when she turned and gave the docket to the tiny kitchen crew.

  Janice was a scrawny little bitch, with just enough werewolf blood to doom her to live on the wrong side of the anomalous barrier, and she liked to exert whatever authority she could on the rest of us poor benighted bastards. I’d seen plenty of people wander in and out to use the toilets without having to make a purchase, but for some reason she had a hate boner for me. Gavin was flirting shamelessly with her by the time I’d finished my business, but his back straightened and he was heading my way as soon as I wandered towards the door, Bennett’s arm a heavy weight around my shoulders.

  “Thank you,” I said when handed the coffee and food. “You gonna put the blood in it?”

  “Keep telling you sweetheart, it’ll cook all the goodness that protects you,” Gavin said with a grin.

  “I spoke to one of the other couriers at headquarters, and they said that’s bullshit. He doesn’t take blood from the vein.”

  “Maybe so,” Bennett said, grazing his nose against my neck, “but it’ll always be the way you get it from us.”

  Drinking vamp blood was one way to get protection in the Quarter. Some parts of the Quarter were under the sway of Rohan, self-styled king of the vamps, and ingesting blood marked you as belonging to one of the Horde.

  If the donation came from someone significantly powerful, no one would touch you for fear of reprisal, until the effects wore off. I held one of the few jobs one of my kind could hold down: courier. We might not rule Meridian City anymore but still, there were those on either side of the massive magically enhanced Wall that wished to communicate.

  There was a serious underground market for smuggling illegal goods. Many otherwise law-abiding humans made a killing putting stuff into our hands. “I’m not running drugs,” I said as the car glided down the street. Vamps and some of the other enclaves prized being able to drive freely around the Quarter and paid legions of unemployed anomalous to clear and patch the asphalt.

  “We know,” Gavin said, pulling into the car park beside their house. “We’d never let Rohan do that to you.”

  “Come inside, I turned the water heater on before we left,” Bennett sa
id.

  “You got to move in here, tiger,” Bennett said as we walked into their house. Reeder House would’ve been the family home of some minor vampire lord before the Revolution. The vamps had ruled Meridian, ruled Cremorne, before the humans rose up and slaughtered them. The finishes and flourishes were dusty and tarnished now, but when every window contained a pane of glass, I was suitably impressed by it. “We got plenty of room.”

  “I’m no one’s suck bag,” I said, moving to the little-used kitchen and dropping the empty coffee cup in the bin.

  “Who’s calling you that?” Gavin said, brows drawing down in a frown. “If those...”

  “One of my kind, living with a couple fang faces? What do you expect people to say? It’s the way pretty much all my brethren are making ends meet. It’s hard enough for me to convince everyone that I’m not a drug fucked nympho at work, living with Marley. It’s what people think, that we’re the perfect white meat.”